SPAM Originates From WHOIS Registration Info

[Paddy]

Lorraine, I've had an email address listed on the 4 web sites for  which I am webmaster (one of which generates about 600 hits a week, from all over) for over a year and have never had any spam because of it. I simply use the ASCII characters in place of the "@" symbol - it seems to work very well. The only problem I have with it is that occasionally it gets mucked up (copying it or something seems to change it) and I have to fix it. Anyway - the characters to use are: "&","#","64",";" - taking out all the quotes and commas. Just put them where you'd normally have the "@" in your email addy in the HTML source code.

The scripts which change your email address into something like this (only usually much longer) are based on the same principal. While in theory, a spam bot could be taught to interpret the ASCII characters too, I think spammers don't need to bother - they get quite enough addresses simply sending the bots out looking for the ampersands!

[LR827]

Thanks, Paddy, & others.

I went back and removed the (no charge for e-mail questions) after my e-mail address, and in the last 2 days I have gotten more than 2 dozen spam mailings!  So apparently it was helping.

Paddy, I am not sure I understand how I should change my e-mail address, with the "&" etc.  Do I put any of those in the html coding in place of the @?  In other words, it would look like "Question & DearDrRoth.com" (without the quotes & spaces, of course)?

[Paddy]

Hi Lorraine - yes, you simply substitute the 5 characters (counting the 6 and the 4 as distinct characters) in the HTML for the "@" - the reason I can't do it here and show you *exactly* what it is supposed to look like is that it will turn into an ampersand! What you see on the web page is the same - it's the coding that is different.

So what you will have in the HTML is something like this:

<a href="mailto:Question"&"#"64";"DearDrRoth.com">Question</a...

- taking out the quotes, of course, and assuming that the link one is supposed to click is "Question".

Here is a link to a page which describes various options, including the one I've attempted to show:

http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/design_no21.htm

Hope that helps.

[LR827]

Well, the "@" didn't seem to take, for some reason... not sure I entered it properly, although I thought I understood your directions, Paddy.

I visited the link you included and used the javascript for e-mail, and it seems to be working just fine.  Hopefully, I won't have any more spam at that address -- just the desired questions from people with emotional problems without the profit motive!

Thanks again so much, to everyone who helped here.

Lorraine

[Mayo]

I had no idea that my post would stimulate this very informative discussion; I am going to learn more about the techniques suggested for preventing spiders from harvesting e-mail addresses.  

I decided to sign-up with Alternative Identity.  My WHOIS information has been changed and I am happy to not have my personal information available for all to see...