| LED Digest 1915: The Art of Hiding Email Addresses |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................... January 5, 2005 Issue #1915 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Keeping the Harvesters at Bay ==-- ~ Will Bontrager "The most effective method in my view is publishing the address as an image." ~ Mark Whitman "You could try using ASCII code for email addresses." --== Problems for Linkers ==-- ~ William Waites "I find the whole linking subject to be bordering on the bizarre." ~ Michael Martinez "You waste valuable links when you remove them." ~ Kathryn Martyn "...sites with good traffic are no longer are interested in link exchanges..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Dropped by Google ==-- ~ Rupert Dick --== Theft of Copywritten Material ==-- ~ Nancy Schettler From: Will Bontrager Subject: Harvesting e-mail addresses > I have done as much as I possibly can to make it difficult > for visitors to harvest email addresses from the websites. > Short of making the member list available only to subscribers, > I'm looking for any other suggestions that might keep > harvesters at bay. - Marsha Kopan, LED 1914 Marsha Kopan didn't mention what she has already done to make it difficult for harvesters, so some of this may be redundant. When I took a look at the URL in the post's signature, I found three harvestable addresses. One in a META tag, as in <.meta http-equiv="reply-to" content=" This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it "> Another was in a mailto link, as in xhref="mailto: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it " The third was in a link to PayPal, as in xhref="https://www.paypal.com/verified/pal= This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it " Although all of these are in the source code, not visible to humans viewing the web page, they are visible to robots and easily harvested. Undoubtedly, LEDers will provide methods of email addresses unavailable to spammer's harvesting robots in addition to those mentioned here. The most effective method in my view is publishing the address as an image. The text version of the email address appears nowhere on the page, not even in the source code. The email address is visible to humans viewing the image, but harvesting robots probably are unable to extract it. Humans can read the email address and type it into their email program. Granted, that is a bit of a bother for folks who prefer to click something and their email program launches with the destination email address pre-filled in. Typing the address anew also introduces the likelihood of errors. For linking, the image with the email address can used. Linking must be in such a way that the text version of the email address exists nowhere on or in the web page or its source code. Various HTML obfuscation schemes exist. The obfuscation is probably more effective on humans than on robots. All HTML encoding I'm aware of can be reversed with a line or three of programming code. Various JavaScript methods exist to hide email addresses. These probably work, for the most part, especially the more convoluted ones. But it's only a matter of time before a JavaScript engine is incorporated into the harvesting robots, if it hasn't already been done. Although I've never done this myself, I'm thinking if people can build browsers that understand JavaScript, they can also build robots with the same ability. Open source browsers do exist, so the programming won't have to be from scratch. When robots have that ability, JavaScript that reveals email addresses to humans will also reveal the addresses to robots. My psyche doesn't resonate well with the idea of spamming, so maybe I'm way off base. But it seems to me that "hidden" email addresses are more likely to be valid and deliverable. They must be considered valuable since someone expended the effort to hide them. This could be an incentive to develop JavaScript-enabled harvesting robots. Okay, I've succeeded in writing a tome and haven't yet introduced a linking method that should work at least into the near future. Here are two: 1. Master Spambot Buster (free) from http://willmaster.com/master/spambotbuster/ uses a regular http://... link to launch the user's email program with the destination email address pre-filled in. It's great for newsletters, news groups, and web pages. For web pages, a self-closing popup is used because the transition from HTTP protocol to MAILTO protocol causes some browsers to display an otherwise blank "Found" web page. The popup hides that potentially confusing web page, but that fact also makes it unusable with some popup blockers. 2. Master Form V3 ($49) from http://willmaster.com/master/formV3/ can be used to send the email address in pieces to a form template, launched from a link. That form can then be used to send a message to the email address, with the address being reconstructed only when the email message is sent by the software on the server. The program could be modified to look up email addresses in a file hidden on the server, so a code can be sent to the template instead of the broken up email address. Another method that works, but doesn't answer the original poster's question about obfuscating email links, is to just use a feedback form in lieu of email links. Master Feedback (free) from http://willmaster.com/master/feedback/ was designed at the start to help spam-proof web sites. Undoubtedly, other programs do the same or similar jobs as those listed above (which are our own). http://cgi.resourceindex.com/ is a good place to start a search for alternate CGI script solutions. In case the idea of feeding junk email addresses to harvesting robots is raised, let's not. The bad spammers spoof From: and Return-Path: addresses in the emails they send. Every undeliverable email will then be returned to an innocent's email box, not to the spammer's. Will Bontrager Sooner or later you'll need CGI http://bontragerconnection.com/ ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Harvesters > Short of making the member list available only to subscribers, > I'm looking for any other suggestions that might keep harvesters > at bay. - Marsha Kopan LED 1914 You could try using ASCII code for email addresses. Every character on a keyboard (and then some) has an ASCII code equivalent. The ASCII code for "a" is 97, "b" is 98, etc. There's a slight catch here, a browser will only recognize a number as ASCII code if you precede the number with &# therefore the HTML version of the ASCII code for "a" is a. You can get the entire ASCII chart at http://www.asciitable.com/. So instead of adding an email address to your member list normally, replace a couple characters of the domain name portion of the address with their ASCII code equivalent. A harvesting spider would scrounge up me@domain.com instead of This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Do harvesters use software that will convert the ASCII code back to normal text? I don't know, I suppose it depends on how much of a problem ASCII encoded email address are (or aren't) for harvesters. Another alternative would be to require site visitors to request the member directory via an input form whereby the visitor submits an email address to your site and a script sends your member directory to that address. A spammer could still end up with your member directory but the list couldn't be picked up by a normal spider and also the harvester would have to deal with the text manually. Another alternative would be to set up a member directory page so that email can only be sent to members from that page. This could be done in a variety of ways but would require the services of a programmer. None of these suggestions are 100% bullet proof but any one of them is more protection than nothing. Mark Whitman ------- new post - new topic -------- From: William Waites Subject: Linking I find the whole linking subject to be bordering on the bizarre. I understand that the principal motivation for linking is to amass a list of links that will be read by Google (and other SEs) leading to the presumption that your site is very popular among other, similar sites. Theoretically, this guides Google et al in determining which sites are the most helpful and relevant based on peer evaluation. But, if everyone and his brother is linking to everyone else, simply for the purpose of raising SE relevance and SERP position, what does this prove about "real" popularity and evaluation? Seems to me that this is a "false god" and that the SEs would be better served, as would their customers, if they relied more on content to evaluate sites than on links. Plus, just think how much better web sites would be if web maintainers could concentrate on content instead of link farming. Sincerely, William Waites Aboriginals: Art of the first Person http://www.tribalworks.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Linking > I build up a list of sites that are relevant to the client's > site but aren't competitors, I put them all into a links page, > and then I solicit all of them for a reciprocal link. In the > fullness of time, typically 6 months or so, I remove the > sites that haven't linked back. - Dave Roberts, LED 1913 You waste valuable links when you remove them. A 1-to-1 ratio of reciprocal linkage hurts your client site's standings, although the Page Rank you pursue is not important. > In this new environment, how do we > conduct linking campaigns? A passive campaign should still work. If you can generate traffic to your client sites, change the reciprocal link pages to Link Recognition Pages. Don't ask for reciprocation. Just tell the visitor that those are sites you recognize as being of value to people interested in your client sites. In time, some of those Webmasters will notice the traffic your client sites send to them, and they will link back. > Any ideas among the bright LED Digest readers? I build sites without reciprocal links and get them into the top ten listings for search results. I don't worry about Page Rank. I keep telling people on this list (and others have as well) that Page Rank is nothing, search results are what you need to aim for. In time, any informative, easy-to-navigate, well-designed (attractive) site will earn inbound links from other sites. Artificial stimulation of linkage is overkill because it no longer produces the benefit people believe it does. Michael Martinez, Author Visualizing Middle-earth, Parma Endorion, and Understanding Middle-earth http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Kathryn Martyn Subject: Linking > I must admit that I was confused by Dave's approach. > On one hand he is looking for relevant, quality sites, which > must surely limit the number of sites available to approach, > but on the other hand he is sending bulk e-mails. - Derek Andrews, LED 1914 Where did you get the idea he was sending bulk e-mails? I believe he said he was searching for sites that he believed would be a good match and would attempt to contact them only after making that determination. That's good marketing. Sending bulk e-mails, at least in the context I believe you implied, is harvesting e-mail addresses from any site with no regard for content or quality and then sending mass messages. Big difference. I look for link partners the old fashioned way and being as the weight loss field has thousands of lousy sites, it takes a long time to find quality. When I do, I take the time to send a nice note and try to make contact, yet rarely do I get a response from a site that's established. One site in particular belongs to a woman in my city, yet she never replied to my personal e-mail introducing myself and asking if we might meet. I like to be involved with others in my industry and I would have thought she would as well, so it was surprising to be rebuffed, but there's no way to know if she ever saw the message any way. ;-( In my experience it certainly appears sites with good traffic no longer are interested in link exchanges, possibly due to the time involved, or perhaps they get so much spam they filter their mail without checking content at all, so their visitors miss out, and they too miss out because no matter what, businesses are like sharks; if they aren't moving, they're dead. Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP Ending Emotional Eating, One Bite at a Time http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Rupert Dick Subject: Anyone know what's happening at Google? We run a very successful community based website in the UK and have been for the last five years. We rely on search engines to send us traffic in particular Google. For four years we have done very well in Google ranking, based village and town names in the UK with over 200,000 references to our pages. At the start of Christmas Google dropped our domain name www.ukvillages.co.uk all together. On one day www.ukvillages.com was listed only and then dropped again. There seems to be no rationale behind this - and Google are not helpful on suggestions or reasons. Is there a LEDer out there who has an insight into how Google behaves. Google says that there are over 153,000 references to www.ukvillages.co.uk in their index (other people referring to us) - but no direct reference to our site at all. Rupert Dick www.ukvillages.co.uk ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Nancy Schettler Subject: Copy theft > ... just today I received notification of a new service > that searches for instances of copy theft from your site. > www.copyscape.com - Andrew Falkingbridge, LED 1914 Stunning! Thank you, Andrew, for sharing the Copyscape resource with us! I used it this morning and found that someone had copied a huge portion of my website, right down to my order form! And the copycat site has been out there for almost a year, and I had no idea. Now I've got to figure out what to do about it... Very Gratefully, Nancy Schettler A Well Dressed Kitchen www.awelldressedkitchen.com
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