Are spam bots really so good for links like <a href="mailto:mail@mail.ru">E-mail</a> and how can I protect my mailbox from spam bots?

The option to replace the email picture disappears. You also need to do WITHOUT using JS. This is a very important condition.

  • I do not understand the essence of the question. More details, please. - MrGons18

3 answers 3

Well, if there is such a link on the page, and the page gets to the bot-scanner, there is no problem getting an email out of it.

If you want to prevent spam from coming to your inbox, do not leave your address in places accessible to bots. For example, on the Internet :)

It is impossible to protect oneself from a smart bot: there are even especially smart ones who solve captcha. And any student can run a regular expression on the page, even me.

  • The fact is that I made a website portfolio. And in the cap there is such a link with my e-mail. Here it is necessary to protect against spam - inferusvv
  • @inferus: no absolute protection. You can only try to complicate the bot's life and hope that its author is lazy. All that a person sees, sees and bot. There is no special space for maneuver, since you do not want js. - VladD
  • Pliz tell me how to complicate) - inferusvv
  • @inferus: for example, check the validity of the headers. Check the speed of transition between pages. In general, try to “catch” a bot on behavior that is not typical for humans. Put an invisible link for people and those who follow it, be considered a bot. Etc. - VladD
  • Yes, I think there will be no problems with spam with gmail, I publish my address openly on almost all sites where I register, I don’t receive anything spamming a day, I’m suffering more with mailings, but mail.ru has had problems with spam. - ЬЬ_

When designing protection, one must proceed from the fact that no protection should cause inconvenience to the user. The user should be able to:

  1. get a normal response by clicking on the link (launching the mailto handler :)
  2. read e-mail without breaking eyes
  3. copy the e-mail, both from the context menu and selecting the text with the mouse (that is, any perversions with non-clickable links, inserting spaces or replacing the @ symbol with "(at)", "dog" etc - by)

All requirements are met only, perhaps, by obfuscation of the link using JavaScript (well, with its own drawbacks). Do I have to bother with this - you decide. My opinion is: it is not worth it in principle. No longer the time when you had to pay for traffic on a 2400 baud modem, and what about spam filters?

  • Perhaps leave as it is) - inferusvv

To protect mailto: links from spam bots, I use the obfuscation tool using JavaScript MailLink . Benefits:

  1. High efficiency method
  2. The lack of inconvenience described in the response of user6550 ,
  3. Unlike other similar services, there is an opportunity to insert the subject of the letter by default and the link text - any word or phrase, when clicked, the user proceeds to send a message to your email box.

Despite the fact that it creates more problems than good, and browser developers have removed the configuration to a great extent , some for some reason or other prohibit the execution of scripts on the pages. Especially for them, immediately after the closing </script> our obfuscated link, add the following text:

 <noscript>[Включите в браузере JavaScript для возможности связаться по электронной почте]</noscript>

Now users with disabled JS at the place where the link should be located, will see the inscription [Включите в браузере JavaScript для возможности связаться по электронной почте] . If they need to contact you by mail, let them temporarily change their browser settings .

Thank.

Screenshot MailLink