Never put an email address in it’s plain text form anywhere on a web page, anywhere! This includes within the front end text, and within the html source code (including online forms, and ‘mailto’ tags).
There is now a huge bunch of web based ‘robots’ who very quickly scan the text and source codes of websites around the world, finding anything that resembles an email address. Most commonly, they look out for the @ symbol, and then will pull of the few words either side of it, store this in a massive database, and sell it on to anyone who’s willing to pay a pittance for it. From experience, the various Nigerian email scams were one of the first to start pulling off email address in this way around 10 years ago. Of course now it’s hugely popular by many many more (particularly those trying to sell various pharmaceutical drugs, or ‘share option’ warnings / recommendations.
I once had an email address I’d given to a popular business group, appear (without my initial permission) on their database of members’ directory. It was only up for about 2 weeks before I’d realised, and had it taken down. Unfortunately, due to the nature of that particular email address I couldn’t block it entirely, close it down, or reject all email sent to it.. However, I never replied to any email address sent to it, nor even read them after the first couple of weeks of it appearing.
The number of spam emails started small enough at about 1-2 per day, within a week this was up to 5-6 per day (which was when I completely stopped using it). However, around a year on, I decided to have a quick look at how many spam emails were waiting for me, so cleared my inbox for the onslaught. Amazingly, despite never having replied to any email, nor even read them.. over the course of the year, there were over 10,000 emails waiting, and I was receiving on average (from the email history), around 300 spam emails every single day as that particular email address propagated itself through various spam list databases
I’ve personally be using this particular technique of email encryption on websites for around the past 10 years. Only once has any email address used in this way, ever been picked up by some sending spam emails (this was when someone manually went through a website I manage, and manually pulled off all the email addresses listed. Who then used it to send unsolicited emails from two UK companies to the individuals listed. The companies were immediately reported to the information commissioners and further action was taken against them! Those email addresses have never been spammed again!.
Never put an email address in it’s plain text form anywhere on a web page, anywhere!
There are a huge bunch of web based ‘robots’ who very quickly scan the text and source codes of websites around the world, finding anything that resembles an email address. Most commonly, they look out for the @ symbol, and then will pull of the few words either side of it, store this in a massive database, and sell it on to anyone who’s willing to pay a pittance for it.
Be very carefully where any digital versions of your client’s brochures or posters may appear on the web, as pdf documents for example, which show the full email address as plain text, within the readable document (so do edit any pdf documents to hide the email address, before you upload it to any website).
If for whatever reason, you don’t want to use the method above for encrypting the email address in ASCII code, the easiest way around the common problem of the at symbol, is for any publicity with which you want to digitalise and put on the web, always swap the @ symbol for the word at, ‘at’, (at) or similar. For example emails(at)ourcompanydomain.co.uk. Most human users will quickly recognise what to swap around for themselves, although as the (at) technique seems the most common, I don’t expect it will be long until a robot is designed to pick this up too.
Adding extra characters in a different colour, just before your domain name, with instructions beneath the email address, is a pretty effective way. For example emails@SPAMourcompanydomainname.co.uk with instructions for humans to remove the SPAM, is also pretty effective.
If you’re managing the emails of a largely publicised company receiving a lot of unsolicited enquiries to various key staff members, and you have a list of staff (with their first name and surname listed somewhere on your website), try not use the classic firstname.surname@ourcompanydomain.com as these will often be tried by unsolicited callers trying to get in contact.
