Can this be protected?

[bmcculley at rcn.com]

>From: Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org>  

>> >Create a little gif or jpg image that displays your email
>> >address.
>> Won't work as "mailto:" link 
>
>Sure it will.  But you shouldn't use it anyway, because the 
>scanning bots will surely look for mailto: links.  
>
><a href="mailto:foo at bar.com"><img src="address.gif></a>

That's the point, you use the gif to avoid coding the email
address as ascii in a mailto link.  When you have the mailto
code in the html source there's no reason not to display it,
all you've accomplished in the above example is to hide it
from the carbon-based lifeforms while leaving it visible to
the silicon-based net denizens.

>AFAIK there's no way to protect a mailto link to make it both 
>obscure the address AND actually still work.  As for plain 
>text, I have read that you can replace the '@' with the HTML 
>entity for it, i.e. &#<ascii-code>;.  Don't remember where I 
>saw this, but it was within the last week or so that I read 
>it.

I figure that using such ploys is stop-gap, it's just a matter
of time until the bots get taught to parse such stuff.  When
that happens it may be worse than counter-productive to have
used that work-around, cuz there's likely to be archived refs
to be harvested.

So the best thing is keep your address off the radar, like
Derek's managed to do.  Use webforms or applets, and filter
the incoming traffic to junk any spam that creeps in from
other channels like sniffers, or virus attacks on folks who
have your real email address - it's hard to have certainty of
insulation, so filters will probably always need to be a part
of the arsenal.

Good luck!

-Brucem