Securing listing email address on website against SPAM

As you may know, WebwinkelKeur performs a legal screening when you register your online store . During this screening we look, among other things, at the proper and easy to find contact information of the webshop. We regularly receive questions from webshops about the security of the email address. If the mail address is mentioned flat on the website, there is a considerable chance that spambots will include the mail address in their database and that all kinds of spam will be sent to the address. Of course, we would rather not have that. So how do you protect your mail address from spambots?

How does a spambot work? There are a few ways to stop a spambot from indexing an e-mail address. First of all, it is important to know how a spambot works. A spambot is a kind of a robot that collects mail addresses that are listed on websites and newsgroups for the purpose of sending advertisements to them. The mail addresses are recognized by the code used for the mail address. <a href="mailto:webmaster@jewebwinkeladres.nl">Email me!</a> As a website administrator, it is important to protect your mail address from these kinds of robots. After all, you want to use your mailbox for important, pertinent, emails and not for something like spam. Fortunately, you can easily protect your mail address from such robots. Below we share some common solutions. The simple method Some webmasters choose to stop making links from the mail address, but make it understandable only to humans. This is done by "cutting up" the mail address into pieces that look like this: webmaster at jewebwinkeladres. nl. This is of course a way to stop spam, since spambots no longer understand that it is an email address. However, it is not very practical for the people who do want to use the email address for valid reasons. For example, visitors to your website cannot now click on a link and send an email directly. Also, not every visitor will understand that "at" stands for @. Email address as an image Another similar method to this is to place a static image (for example, a jpg) on the website. This is then readable for visitors, but the disadvantage remains that the e-mail address is not clickable. Creating an image containing your email address can easily be done with various websites such as safemail .Email address displayed as an image Encoding the mail address A better solution is to use javascript where you encode the mail address. So what does this look like you ask yourself? Encoding the mail address works as follows: each character has a numeric equivalent . For example, the letter A corresponds to the code &#65;. When you code the mail address in this way the spambots do not understand that it is a mail address. In short; you get (almost) no spam. A handy website that helps you with this is addressmunger.com . While doing business there are of course better things to occupy yourself with than SPAM Contact form A final solution is to use a contact form. Unfortunately, this is not sufficient legally and it is also insufficient to pass the inspection of Stichting WebwinkelKeur. It is a hard requirement of ours that an e-mail address is present on the website in a clear and logical location. However, if you only have a website then this is a good solution. The combination of the previous solution (encoding the mail address) in combination with a contact form is of course very welcome. First of all, a contact form is an invitation for consumers to send a mail due to its low threshold. After all, they can respond immediately without opening their own mailbox. In addition, of course, the mail address is not visible to the user (or spambot). The contact form can thereby be provided with certain rules to prevent SPAM through the form. Some examples of such rules are: - The number of messages that can be sent from the same IP address is limited (e.g. max. 5 per hour). - The content of the message can be checked. Thus messages with too many links can be stopped. - You can enter a calculation or text from an image (CAPTCHA) to make access difficult for bots. The idea behind this is that normal use will not cause problems in sending the mail. However, providing only a contact form is error-prone. For example, we often see (in some browsers) that a contact form does not work properly or that due to a technical problem the e-mail does not arrive. In those cases, a user must be able to fall back on an e-mail address (or phone number) to still be able to get in touch with the web store. Conclusion There is no 100% watertight solution to prevent SPAM. There are already smart bots that effortlessly read images, decode javascript and solve arithmetic. However, most bots are still "dumb" and do not understand how to decode properly coded email address. Because there are enough technical solutions to protect your e-mail address, the risk of spam is not a reason not to include the e-mail address. You are also required when selling over the Internet to clearly state your business information including your e-mail address. Clearly stating the e-mail address is important for any organization. Making the e-mail address easy to find ensures that people can easily contact the organization. However, it is also important to properly secure the e-mail address against spam. The best way to do this is to use encryption of the mail address. By encoding the mail address, spambots do not understand that it is a mail address. However, people on your Web site naturally understand this. In addition, your organization also benefits from using a contact form. A contact form makes contacting you via e-mail even more accessible and can prevent SPAM at the same time. In addition, you can then use a spam filter at the server level to keep out the advertising that still comes in from your mailbox.