I would like to use an image instead of text to display a customer-service e-mail to avoid getting spammed.
Can spiders/bots see the Alt tag on an image?
Debbie
I would expect so because it is plain text but whether they’d be trained to search for that alt text I don’t know? Some might only look at the mailto: whereas others might look for an @ symbol in the format of a email address. You could always use PHP to hide the e-mail until a button was clicked to reveal it or something.
Okay, then I could use some suggestions…
When a credit card payment is processed, I display a message of the results plus a contact e-mail (especially if the charge was declined).
I don’t want to start off getting spammed, yet accessibility and what-not are also important!
I figured doing a screen-shot of my e-mail address and then inserting it as an img would be the safest?!
(Of course if the image fails or the user is blind, then there is an issue!)
There must be some way around this issue?!
(Where is DeathShadow at??)
Thanks,
Debbie
You could the readable text to [at] instead of @. And in the HTML, change the @ to its ASCII equivalent: http://www.asciitable.com/
Lastly, set up the email address so that it is forwarded through another account, such as a gmail account. That should help cut down on the spam.
When a credit card payment is processed, I display a message of the results plus a contact e-mail (especially if the charge was declined).
How are robots getting to this page? Are they purchasing something? A stupid robot should never make it through a form without validation errors. A smart robot might at best manage to give you a credit card number that passes the Luhn algorithm (or whatever you’re using to determine whether a card number can actually exist).
I don’t want to start off getting spammed, yet accessibility and what-not are also important!
Remember, this page with this email are not given to robots, unless they are so darn clever they can fill out your form with a correct credit card number (of course, a human spammer could do this : )
I figured doing a screen-shot of my e-mail address and then inserting it as an img would be the safest?!
Meh, bad idea. More bandwidth, the alt text is perfectly viewable to robots (what are screen readers but special robots), and frankly is just as bad as that “you need to enable Javascript in order to view this email address” basshattery. : )
However, at my work we do have many regular pages (available to everyone) which do have email addresses, and I do use the ascii trick Superman mentioned. There are bots who can get around it, but they are in the small minority… likely because very few people do it. Be careful: always test the text (I use it in both the href and the anchor text… I also use it for the word “email” as well).
EDIT: ah, disregard my babble above. You’re offering a contact email to those who fail your form. We do that too (with ascii).
One thing you can do to prevent offering this message to the stupid robots is to have, on the server side, no message offered if the user filled in a “spam trap”.
Most of the stupid robots fill in all the fields, often with gobbledygook. They don’t read the labels.
So offer an input, who is hidden, with a label, who is also hidden, that if filled in and submitted, do not process the form and do not bring the contact message.
The label must clearly tell screen reader users and those without CSS (say, text browser or older mobile or whatever) NOT to fill that input in.
I’ve used this to pretty good success. The only issue I’ve had with it is, some robots have recently stopped filling in the form halfway through, and since the spam trap was the last question, the form was getting through.
So put it somewhere near the top: to prevent people being stupid (which is what even the smartest people become when they start filling out forms), don’t put it as the very first question, and put it after a group of questions that kinda belong together (like, if there are 3 fields dealing with name and title, and then more fields dealing with address, put the spam trap after the name fields and before the address fields).
It’s safe to use display: none with this spam trap: most screen readers will read it anyway (the one big exception to display: none not showing in them), and whichever lesser reader doesn’t, no biggie. Every non-reader robot will see it though.
Any email address placed in a web page will eventually be read by bots and then it will get lots of spam. The only way to prevent that ever happening is to not put the actual email address in the page but to instead use a contact form that attaches the email address after it is submitted. That way if the bots do start bypassing the checks built into the form you can update the form to block them again.
Don’t you think most bots can get around that?
Lastly, set up the email address so that it is forwarded through another account, such as a gmail account. That should help cut down on the spam.
But then I’d have to give people a gmail account, right?
I still like the image idea… 
Debbie
Whatever you provide as the workaround for all your blind visitors and those visitors with images turned off or using text only browsers will also provide the information to the bots. You can’t block the bots by using an image without also blocking a significant fraction of real people.
So how effective is…
debbe AT MyWebsite DOT com
or
debbe @ NOSPAM MyWebsite DOT com
I would think most bots can get past those.
BTW, I an not providing e-mail links. People will have to type in my e-mail into their email app.
Debbie
Sure, some can. But it raises the bar a little bit. I can’t say I’ve had much of a problem with spam in combination with that and forwarding to a gmail account.
But then I’d have to give people a gmail account, right?
Nope. Not if you use a mail forwarder. You can set that up at your registrar. Or, if you’re using your hosting provider’s DNS entries at your registrar, then you set that up in your host’s control panel.
I still like the image idea…
That’s a bad idea. It’s not very usable.
- It’s not accessible. It can’t be copied or clicked on. It’s very difficult to work with from a user’s stand point.
- Text should stay text. Images should stay in an image format. When you swap either one, you run into problems.
- If someone has to type out your email address, they can mistype it.
- OCR has become sophisticated enough to defeat a good portion of CAPTCHA solutions. An email address in an image won’t stand much of a chance.
- You’ll get spam anyway.
Honestly, if you’re running a business and you make it difficult to contact you, I wouldn’t be doing much (if any) business with you.
I won’t echo what other have said about it already, but a contact form is actually a very good suggestion. It’s commonly employed on many websites, so new visitors won’t be confused about anything, unlike with an email address in an image.
But, the only sure way to not get spam is to not use email at all.
Sorry for being dense, but I’m still not getting what you are saying?!
People would email “debbie@mysite.com” and then what??
How is gmail helping prevent spam??
I won’t echo what other have said about it already, but a contact form is actually a very good suggestion. It’s commonly employed on many websites, so new visitors won’t be confused about anything, unlike with an email address in an image.
It’s a good idea, except it won’t really work for things like telling people how to contact me on the screen that says their payment failed.
How about this…
If on the payment results screen that is displayed after I run their credit card, what if I just had…
For further assistance, contact Customer Service by clicking on the “Contact Us” link in the footer below.
(That link would take them to a Customer Service Form.)
Would that work??
Debbie
They don’t seem to. I’ve been using @ to encode @ in email addresses (link destination and text) for years, and very little spam has come as a result of it.
The problem is that it is highly inaccessible.
Then you will lose a very high proportion of potential messages. If you can’t put the effort in to make it easy for people to contact you, either with a mailto link or a contact form, many of them simply won’t bother, but will look elsewhere and find sites that have made the effort. If you have obfuscated it in any way - even as simple as replacing @ with [at], let alone adding words that need to be removed - will be enough of a barrier that a lot of people will either try and fail, or will turn away in disgust.
Gmail, and some other email providers, have very effective spam filters, so even though you might get a load of spam sent to the account, it gets killed before it reaches your inbox.
Use a generic email address, get a decent mail provider (eg – google apps) and let them worry about spam.
Can you give me an actual code example?
I’m not understanding how you use a code so bots can’t see that it is an ampersand, but you still display a readable ampersand.
Then you will lose a very high proportion of potential messages. If you can’t put the effort in to make it easy for people to contact you, either with a mailto link
That’s rather presumptuous on a few levels.
First off, for lots of web-based e-mail users like me, links are useless and annoying. (Not everyone uses MS Windows and MS Outlook.)
I always have to type in or copy and paste e-mail addresses…
Now, having a web-form is a different matter, and makes some sense.
or a contact form, many of them simply won’t bother, but will look elsewhere and find sites that have made the effort. If you have obfuscated it in any way - even as simple as replacing @ with [at], let alone adding words that need to be removed - will be enough of a barrier that a lot of people will either try and fail, or will turn away in disgust.
I’ve seen a lot of people do that, and since the e-mail is just for when there are issues, I’d hope that few people will ever need to e-mail me.
(If this was a sales e-mail, then that would be different.)
Debbie
That is the code example. You’re just editing the source HTML.
That’s rather presumptuous on a few levels.
First off, for lots of web-based e-mail users like me, links are useless and annoying. (Not everyone uses MS Windows and MS Outlook.)
I always have to type in or copy and paste e-mail addresses…
Whoa, whoa, now wait a minute…links are the lifeblood of the internet. As for mailto links, those can be used with more than just Windows and Outlook. As long as you have a default client set, you can use them on any platform or any mail client.
Not everyone does it your way of copying & pasting, and it’s presumptuous to think that. There are usually certain expectations as to how certain things operate–baseline standards, if you will. There are usually multiple ways to do things, but there are usually only a couple ways out of those which are standardized, recognizable, and relatively easy to implement.
Now, having a web-form is a different matter, and makes some sense.
I’ve seen a lot of people do that, and since the e-mail is just for when there are issues, I’d hope that few people will ever need to e-mail me.
(If this was a sales e-mail, then that would be different.)
An email address is an email address no matter where you display it.
Let me try an example metaphor here. If someone were to say “an ice cream truck is driving around the neighborhood”, what kind of vehicle would you picture? What color would it be? Any special sounds?
What if the ice cream truck was a red pick-up truck? Would you recognize it as an ice cream truck?
It’s the same concept with an email link–certain expectations are there about what it looks like and how you interact with it. If you make it too different than the expected norm, it might not be easily recognized and would cause unnecessary confusion.
Transmission getting scattered.
Could you please paste the entire HTML which would conform to how you avoid spam-bots, please?
What is confusing me is if you have “@” anywhere, a spam-bots gonna see it…
Whoa, whoa, now wait a minute…links are the lifeblood of the internet.
Of course.
As for mailto links, those can be used with more than just Windows and Outlook. As long as you have a default client set, you can use them on any platform or any mail client.
My point.
I haven’t for 5 years.
I ditched M$ and proprietary e-mail apps about 4-5 years ago.
Everything I use is browser-based, and unfortunately all e-mail links do is try to launch an e-mail client that isn’t configured.
A lot of people I know are in similar situations.
Not everyone does it your way of copying & pasting, and it’s presumptuous to think that.
I never said that, but I think e-mail is much different from when 95% of users has M$ XP ans M$ Outlook.
So you think still use and expect email links that pop up an email app?? :-/
And what do people think about web forms??
(I’ve always hated them because I assumed that they went somewhere that no one ever checked?!)
My goal right now is to avoid getting “spam listed”.
I’d be open to an e-mail form in the near future.
(Of course that’s going to require MySQL, right??)
Debbie
Code the address like this:
myaddress@example.com
The @ displays as an “at” sign, and works like one in a link, too. But a lot of bots don’t recognize that string as an email address.
If you’re using a common webmail provider, there are some ways to configure it, such as this with firefox: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Changing%20the%20e-mail%20program%20used%20by%20Firefox
Nope, it doesn’t have to. For example, in PHP, you can use the mail() function. That can be used for sending a email to a real email account without needing to access a database.
My point.
I haven’t for 5 years.
I ditched M$ and proprietary e-mail apps about 4-5 years ago.
Everything I use is browser-based, and unfortunately all e-mail links do is try to launch an e-mail client that isn’t configured.
A lot of people I know are in similar situations.
This has actually been one of the more valid arguments against mailto links. I also don’t use the program that tries to launch (Evolution hasn’t worked for me in three years, so usually I can avoid clicking mailto links).
Thanks for the link.
(Maybe Debbie will catch up with the 21st century?!) 
Nope, it doesn’t have to. For example, in PHP, you can use the mail() function. That can be used for sending a email to a real email account without needing to access a database.
Maybe I was getting confused with a “Comments Form”?
So I would just create an HTML Form and use mail() to e-mail the User’s Form Inputs to me directly, right?
And why is it this prevents spam and my e-mail being harvested??
Thanks,
Debbie