You've got to ask yourself "Why am I considering this, and what's the potential cost?"

I think that merlyn would assert that the practice of placing text in graphic images for the purpose of thwarting harvesters is a deprecated one, even though he himself was one of the pioneers in the process that makes it possible.

The issue is that such a practice makes the site inaccessable to a portion of its potential user base. First, obviously so to those with text-only browsers, but even more importantly, to those with visual impairments.

I think that a more robust solution for hiding an email address is to bury it in the CGI script or a (possibly encrypted) configuration file. There is no reason that the "Click here to send a message to the site administrator" needs to display the actual email address to which such a message is sent. Output to the browser only what the browser needs. If it's sufficient to have a "send me a message" button, don't bother placing the email address in public view at all. The script that processes the form can know the address through other means. It's not safe to have the script send an email message based on retrieving the address through GET or POST anyway, even if the address is stored in a hidden field, because a potential spammer could use his own pseudo-browser to send his own list of email addresses in place of yours to your script, thus using you as a spam gateway.

Just a few tidbits of food for thought...


Dave


"If I had my life to do over again, I'd be a plumber." -- Albert Einstein

In reply to Re: Email anti-harvester code by davido
in thread Email anti-harvester code by Anonymous Monk

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