Email Riddler (online tool)

[jonnyray]

Email Riddler (online tool)

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/emailriddler/

I have been using the email riddler online tool for some time, but just lately I have been receiving spam emails from those pages that contain the encrypted email address.

As the real email address is encrypted the only thing that may give it away is that it shows in the status bar when clicking on the Contact Us link.

Is there anyway the script can be altered to omit the email address being shown on the status bar or scramble the look of it.

Regards Jonnyray

[Twey]

Yes, but there's no need to. It won't deter such bots -- or, more likely, humans -- that can understand the email address; they must have some form of Javascript parser (or be humans).

[jonnyray]

H twey

So There's no point in using the Email Riddler tool then?

[jscheuer1]

If you don't use it (or something like it), you will just get tons more spam. In fact, the security breach of your email address most likely did not come from the page with your email address scrambled using email riddler, but from either something else you did with the address, like signing up for something, using it to register somewhere, etc. Possibly, someone saw your email address there and submitted it to the spammers directly. However, make no mistake, just because the human eye can see the address in the status bar does not mean that a bot can. In fact 99 to 100% of these bots (or spiders as they are sometimes called) cannot see it.

[jonnyray]

Hi John


The email address that’s on my webpage isn’t use for anything else, it’s used just to contact me, and I reply with another email address.

I did this because I use to receive tons of spam email with a previous address that was not encrypted.

Paul

[Twey]

So There's no point in using the Email Riddler tool then?

While it's not 100% effective, it's a fairly big step in the right direction - except that people without Javascript can't send you emails. The best thing to do, of course, is use a form on your site to send the email.

[jscheuer1]

Here's a non-javascript encryptor, I've had success protecting addresses with it for years, occasionally I get spam, but nothing like what I receive on my primary which I never bothered protecting:

http://home.comcast.net/~ansiguy/emailen1.htm

The encryptor requires javascript to use it but, not to mail to the resulting encrypted address.

One thing you should remember though, spammers will occasionally send out emails that will go to anyone on a domain or anyone with an address close to one they concoct on a domain. No amount of scrambling can protect against that.

[jonnyray]

Thanks John

I will give that non-javascript encryptor a go.

Cheers Paul

Twey

I'll try both ideas on my site and evaluate the best option

Cheers Paul