Myname (at) email (dot) com = confused?!
Have you ever wondered why you don’t see email addresses on web pages in the normal yourname@domain.com but more like something that resemble this:
yourname (at) domain (dot) com
I recently found out why this is. It is all down to little programs called scrapers that are programed similarly to viruses. They are set off and similar to search engine robots follow links on pages and pull off anything in the content that looks like an email address. These are then collated and either sold on to companies or used to fill your mail box with spam. So next time you’re considering writing your email address on a web page or forum post just remember - it could result in a lot of spam.
The most common way around this is to create a form so that the information can be sent straight to you via the server rather than you having to publish your email address. Forms like this require knowledge of HTML and a scripting language like PHP. So for my first project on this site I will learn how do to this and post the guide and results up here for everyone to use.
Tags: Contact Form, Email, Scrapers
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March 19th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Good post dude. Thanks for sharing.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:40 am
Yoko - No worries. Since posting this I’ve noticed more and more people using it. Nothing to do with my post though, i’m sure of that.