Web Tip of the Month - February 2007

This Month's Tip - Separating the Beef from the Spam

OK, last month we emphasized the importance of giving visitors to your website the ability to contact you. By supplying a contact link on your site, your customers and potential customers are just one click away from direct communication with you. But what is at the other end of that link?

The easiest thing to use is a simple link to your email address. But what about spam? It's certainly a problem. According to reports, in the month of December 2006, 90 to 95 percent of all email traffic consisted of spam. So, you say, what's to stop evil spambots from harvesting my email address from my website and spamming the living daylights out of me? Absolutely nothing.

Unless, you obfuscate. Also known as munging, essentially, it means converting your email address link code to a form that will display in a web browser but will appear to most spambots as just random characters. You can obfuscate your email address using ASCII code or Javascript but you don't have to be a coding nerd to use this technique.

A number of websites will take your code and convert it for you. At no charge. Some examples include AddressMunger.com, Alicorna's Email Obfuscator and my personal favorite, Automaticlab's Enkoderform.

Email Obfuscation works fine if all you want is a simple link to your email address. But if you want to get more specific you need a form.

Forms are great but here you have to be careful. Some form scripts will place your your email address right in the page code for any spambot to see. If you have a service to work on your website, make sure that they use a form that keeps your address separate and retrieves it from the server.

If you are updating and maintaining your own website, you can take advantage of php scripting without having to learn it yourself. There are a number of programs that will create forms for you and may already be included with your website hosting. Programs such as phpFormGenerator give you an easy way to provide feedback forms without revealing your email address.

Whether you use simple email or a complicated form, you can communicate with your customers while keeping your email address from being exposed.

But is that enough? Next month we'll explore more potential spam dangers for your website.

Remember, on the web, your web site is you

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