SafeMailTo

Description

SafeMailTo is a tiny piece of Javascript for stopping spam bot harvesters from obtaining your e-mail address from your homepage. The e-mail address doesn't appear anywhere in the HTML source and thus cannot be read by spam bots. It is, however, still shown in real browsers, including a mailto link.

Spam bots are automated programs that crawl the Internet looking for e-mail addresses which are then harvested and used as recipients for spam mailings. This results in the fact that you can't even put your e-mail address on your homepage anymore without risking an annoying ammount of spam. As long as your e-mail address appears in the HTML source code, you're at risk. The solution is to not list it in the sourcecode. SafeMailTo provides a way of doing this.

It works by employing 'encryption' (ROT13) to hide your e-mail address. A piece of javascript code decrypts the e-mail address and places the unencrypted e-mail address in the HTML page. This will protect your e-mail address from spambots that do not know Javascript and/or ROT13 encryption. (NOTE: ROT13 isn't real encryption, merely a simple obfuscation to prevent the literal email address from showing up in your HMTL code, where spambots will harvest it).

Details

Usage

Put this piece of code in the head section of the page on which you want to include the e-mail address:

<script language="javascript">
  function rot13(s) {
    var n = '';
    for (i = 0; i < s.length; i++) {
      ch = s.charCodeAt(i);
      if ( ((ch>64) && (ch<78)) || ((ch>96) && (ch<110)) ) {
        ch += 13;
      } else
      if ( ((ch>77) && (ch<91)) || ((ch>109) && (ch<123)) ) { 
        ch -= 13;
      }
      if (ch == 124) {
        n = n.concat ("\n");
      } else {
        n = n.concat (String.fromCharCode(ch));
      }
    }
    return (n);
  }

  function email(emailaddress, subject) {
    var realaddress = rot13(emailaddress);
    return("<a href='mailto:"+realaddress+"?subject="+subject+"'>"+realaddress+"</a>");
  }
</script>

Next, cut and paste this piece of code at the place in your HTML page where you want your email address to appear:

<p>You may email me at 
<script language="javascript">
  email("ROT13 EMAIL ADDRESS", "About your homepage");
</script>.</p>

Now, convert your e-mail address to ROT13 by typing it in below.

Substitute the "ROT13 EMAIL ADDRESS" text in the code above with the result of the ROT13 encoding.