OT hiding from web email mining robots

anthony wooldridge · Mar 16, 2004

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

Jim Thompson · Mar 16, 2004

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:11:20 -0000, "anthony wooldridge"
<arwooldridge_spamfree@genie.co.uk> wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

anthony wooldridge · Mar 16, 2004

"Jim Thompson" <thegreatone@example.com> wrote in message
news:ul7c5058dfpsq6cdhu4gg79sio5h8j7jc2@4ax.com...

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:11:20 -0000, "anthony wooldridge"
arwooldridge_spamfree@genie.co.uk> wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the
mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

I don't know about that, but I'm interested. Presently I use an
*image* for my E-mail address on my website, requiring a human to
manually enter it into their E-mail client.

...Jim Thompson

Yes that was the thread.
I remember you mentioning that image method,
which seems fairly bot proof.
There was another technique mentioned though, something along the lines of
using ascii codes
instead of text characters in the mailto link

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

MikeM · Mar 16, 2004

anthony wooldridge wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I'm interested in how to preclude email mining robots from
getting a valid address out of usnet postings, but still
being able to include a "human" readable address...

MikeM

Nick Denman · Mar 16, 2004

This may help http://www.robelle.com/tips/email-cloak.html

-=Nick

"anthony wooldridge" <arwooldridge_spamfree@genie.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c355pq$7fc$1@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the
mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

Active8 · Mar 16, 2004

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 22:47:11 -0000, anthony wooldridge wrote:

"Jim Thompson" <thegreatone@example.com> wrote in message
news:ul7c5058dfpsq6cdhu4gg79sio5h8j7jc2@4ax.com...
On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:11:20 -0000, "anthony wooldridge"
arwooldridge_spamfree@genie.co.uk> wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the
mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

I don't know about that, but I'm interested. Presently I use an
*image* for my E-mail address on my website, requiring a human to
manually enter it into their E-mail client.

...Jim Thompson

Yes that was the thread.
I remember you mentioning that image method,
which seems fairly bot proof.
There was another technique mentioned though, something along the lines of
using ascii codes
instead of text characters in the mailto link

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

Yes. That was me and though it's archived at google under that long
thread about the Swen worm/virus, I'll reiterate. This is a better
subject line to archive this, anyway.

You use ASCII codes. Get out yer ASCII chart and write down the
decimal values of the characters you want - I got a little VB app
that does this. Maybe I'll put it on A.B.S.E. You just type in what
you want to encode and click "HTML Ascii Encode" to get it on the
clipboard. You can also get straight hex and ascii. I even encode
the "mailto:" part to foil the wiseacre that's looking for "mailto:"
in links since, if you noticed, some URLs have &20; or whatever
(space) in them. A spam bot could copy that and it'd work. I can't
encode the HTML tags cause it doesn't work. Tags must be spelled
out, it seems.

hi would be "hi". You have to preceed the number with the
ampersand and pound sign and terminate it with the semicolon. Funny,
I thought I used to be able to use hex numbers without the #, but
that isn't working I'll disable that button.

So you just spell out

maito://richard.head@sfb.commie or whatever

I see Nick posted a link that covers this and it contains a link to
a page that will encode your addy for you. That's a good idea. A
JavaScript (JS ain't Java!!) encoder. I'll do that as soon as I get
done writing a Python GUI for GerbMerge. Gerbmerge is pretty cool.
Needs a GUI.

Never mind. That page emails you your encoding. They're probably
selling the list.

I'll wrap up the VB app with the cheesy MS set up program and post
it. You'll have to get a VB6 runtime library if you don't have one
on your system already. I don't want to post a multi-part MIME on
A.B.S.E. if I don't have to. I haven't bothered with a site in a
while but maybe some of you can redistribute it from your sites.

Free as in beer.

--
Best Regards,
Mike

Alan · Mar 16, 2004

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:11:20 -0000, "anthony wooldridge"
<arwooldridge_spamfree@genie.co.uk> wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

I got round the problem by using links to a "contact" page which
contains a form for the user to fill in. The contact page is written
in PHP and doesn't contain any e-mail details (see sig below).

Of course once I send a rely then the other person has my e-mail
address but that's OK.

Alan

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jenal Communications
Manufacturers and Suppliers of HF Selcall
P O Box 1108, Morley, WA, 6943
Tel: +61 8 9370 5533 Fax +61 8 9370 5106
Web Site: http://www.jenal.com
e-mail: http://www.jenal.com/contact.php
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Active8 · Mar 16, 2004

It's up. Sorry, my new news reader won't let me set it to post the
attachment as a followup. Doom on the person who unintentionally
clicks that header. 200+ kB 4.8 k lines. Better set up my ISP site.

Here

http://home.earthlink.net/~mcolasono/bin/Ascii2Hex.zip 254 kB

IIRC, the ms setup will give you the option to get the VB6 runtime
from the web. That assumes they haven't moved it.

--
Best Regards,
Mike

Active8 · Mar 16, 2004

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 11:02:23 +0800, Alan wrote:

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:11:20 -0000, "anthony wooldridge"
arwooldridge_spamfree@genie.co.uk> wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

I got round the problem by using links to a "contact" page which
contains a form for the user to fill in. The contact page is written
in PHP and doesn't contain any e-mail details (see sig below).

Of course once I send a rely then the other person has my e-mail
address but that's OK.

Alan

Refresh my memory. If I use PHP to print html to a page, the text
spit out of the server doesn't show up in view source, correct?

If someone saved the page, they'd only be able to see what's not
enclosed in script tags?

--
Best Regards,
Mike

Spajky · Mar 16, 2004

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 14:24:25 -0700, Jim Thompson
<thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

but I'm interested. Presently I use an
*image* for my E-mail address on my website, requiring a human to
manually enter it into their E-mail client.

I use added & bolded word in my mail address with note to remove that
on my site, so visitor has to copy/paste the address into mail
programm & remove added stuff ... works for me, no spam at all till
now (knock knock) ...

-- Regards, SPAJKY ÂŽ
& visit my site @ http://www.spajky.vze.com
"Tualatin OC-ed / BX-Slot1 / inaudible setup!"
E-mail AntiSpam: remove ##

LioNiNoiL at NetScApE_DoT · Mar 16, 2004

That page emails you your encoding. They're probably selling the list.

Don't use it. Alicorna has an "E-mail Obfuscator" page with a CGI script
that does the encoding for you in real-time:

http://alicorna.com/obfuscator.html

Active8 · Mar 16, 2004

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 03:28:40 -0800, LioNiNoiL at NetScApE_DoT_NeT
wrote:

That page emails you your encoding. They're probably selling the list.

Don't use it. Alicorna has an "E-mail Obfuscator" page with a CGI script
that does the encoding for you in real-time:

http://alicorna.com/obfuscator.html

You have to dismiss 2 JavaScript errors to get the page and 3 more
to convert

a@b.com to

<a href="mailto:a@b.c">a@b.c</a>

which displays a@b.com for the link test. Did you write this page?
Christ on a crutch... Whoever did needs drug counseling.

--
Best Regards,
Mike

Richard Henry · Mar 16, 2004

"MikeM" <joe@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:c35dun$508$2@coward.ks.cc.utah.edu...

anthony wooldridge wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I'm interested in how to preclude email mining robots from
getting a valid address out of usnet postings, but still
being able to include a "human" readable address...

The email address attached to this message is rphenry@home.com, which used
to be a valid address. @home.com has been out of business for some time
now, and the local ISP changed our addresses to cox.net.

My "anonymous" email-address is pomerado at hotmail dot com.

Can you (presumable human) read those?

Active8 · Mar 16, 2004

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 03:28:40 -0800, LioNiNoiL at NetScApE_DoT_NeT
wrote:

That page emails you your encoding. They're probably selling the list.

Don't use it. Alicorna has an "E-mail Obfuscator" page with a CGI script
that does the encoding for you in real-time:

http://alicorna.com/obfuscator.html

from the about page:
***
Alicorna was founded and is directed by Bonni Elizabeth Hall. Bonni
is formally educated in Fine and Applied Art and Design. She began
an ongoing love affair with the internet in 1993 and made her first
web page in 1994. Having become highly proficient in web design and
Information Technology,
***

HA!

***
she eventually secured a position with a large internet service
provider
***

things are getting clearer now.

***
where she accumulated a great deal of experience and
on-the-job-training in the areas of technical support, customer
service, system administration, and general internet culture and
technology.
***

yeah whatever

--
Best Regards,
Mike

Jim Thompson · Mar 16, 2004

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:11:20 -0000, "anthony wooldridge"
<arwooldridge_spamfree@genie.co.uk> wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

Active8 · Mar 16, 2004

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 09:33:33 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:11:20 -0000, "anthony wooldridge"
arwooldridge_spamfree@genie.co.uk> wrote:

I remember a thread a while ago on this newsgroup
about how to hide your mailto link in a web page
from email mining web bots.

I think it went along the lines that you use esc control codes in the mailto
link,
and the mailto link works as normal but the bots can't mine it.

Does any know if this method works?

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

Is this site safe?

http://www.ysagoon.com/diz/script/encode.php?email=

...Jim Thompson

It encoded what I typed in and didn't throw JS errors. It's PHP. It
just sends what you type in to the server and the PHP script encodes
the query and send it to the server to spit back at you.

Problem is... you don't have the script so if the site dissapears,
it's gone.

You can always take MPLAB from microchip and type in string literals
and look at the hex codes. just stick "&#" in front and ";" after
each hex code and convert to decimal

Must be why I wrote that little app.

--
Best Regards,
Mike

Colubris · Mar 17, 2004

Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net> wrote in message news:<nblv2i1gukyh$.dlg@news.individual.net>...

snip
Yes. That was me and though it's archived at google under that long
thread about the Swen worm/virus, I'll reiterate. This is a better
subject line to archive this, anyway.

You use ASCII codes. Get out yer ASCII chart and write down the
decimal values of the characters you want - I got a little VB app
that does this. Maybe I'll put it on A.B.S.E. You just type in what
you want to encode and click "HTML Ascii Encode" to get it on the
clipboard. You can also get straight hex and ascii. I even encode
the "mailto:" part to foil the wiseacre that's looking for "mailto:"
in links since, if you noticed, some URLs have &20; or whatever
(space) in them. A spam bot could copy that and it'd work. I can't
encode the HTML tags cause it doesn't work. Tags must be spelled
out, it seems.

hi would be "hi". You have to preceed the number with the
ampersand and pound sign and terminate it with the semicolon. Funny,
I thought I used to be able to use hex numbers without the #, but
that isn't working I'll disable that button.

So you just spell out

maito://richard.head@sfb.commie or whatever

I see Nick posted a link that covers this and it contains a link to
a page that will encode your addy for you. That's a good idea. A
JavaScript (JS ain't Java!!) encoder. I'll do that as soon as I get
done writing a Python GUI for GerbMerge. Gerbmerge is pretty cool.
Needs a GUI.

Never mind. That page emails you your encoding. They're probably
selling the list.

I'll wrap up the VB app with the cheesy MS set up program and post
it. You'll have to get a VB6 runtime library if you don't have one
on your system already. I don't want to post a multi-part MIME on
A.B.S.E. if I don't have to. I haven't bothered with a site in a
while but maybe some of you can redistribute it from your sites.

Free as in beer.

Hi Active8,
Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried this tip - didn't work out.
When I selected the 'e-mail' link in the modified page, the e-mail
program opens up and fills in all the ASCII code ("&", "#",the
numbers, and the ";") in the "send to" line.
Any ideas??

Arch

Jan Panteltje · Mar 17, 2004

On a sunny day (Tue, 16 Mar 2004 07:03:34 -0800) it happened "Richard Henry"
<rphenry@home.com> wrote in <eHE5c.11017$uh.9762@fed1read02>:

My "anonymous" email-address is pomerado at hotmail dot com.

Can you (presumable human) read those?
But then you could also make a small .jpg or .gif with the email in it,

and embed it in the website.
I think those scanning programs do not yet do OCR?
JP

anthony wooldridge · Mar 17, 2004

Hi Active8,
Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried this tip - didn't work out.
When I selected the 'e-mail' link in the modified page, the e-mail
program opens up and fills in all the ASCII code ("&", "#",the
numbers, and the ";") in the "send to" line.
Any ideas??

Arch

Thanks for all those links folks.

Arch did you check there are no spaces or other formatting codes hidden in
the string?
I made a mistake of editing the string first in Notepad but had the word
wrap on so
due to the very long line it inserted newline wordwrap control codes which
threw the browser out.

I finally got the following to work nicely for me in MicroCrash FP with IE
6.0.2800
I used the little downloadable app, and a bit of editing to hide it in JS

<script type="text/javascript">

document.write("<a href=mailto:");

document.write("arwooldrid&
#103;e4@o2.co.uk>");

document.write("email arwooldridge");

document.write("@o2.co.uk</a>");

</script>

I could have obfuscated the plain text a little more but I don't think the
robots will find anything in there.

Everything works fine as expected in the browser.

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

Active8 · Mar 17, 2004

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 20:12:50 -0000, anthony wooldridge wrote:

Hi Active8,
Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried this tip - didn't work out.
When I selected the 'e-mail' link in the modified page, the e-mail
program opens up and fills in all the ASCII code ("&", "#",the
numbers, and the ";") in the "send to" line.
Any ideas??

Arch

Thanks for all those links folks.

Arch did you check there are no spaces or other formatting codes hidden in
the string?
I made a mistake of editing the string first in Notepad but had the word
wrap on so
due to the very long line it inserted newline wordwrap control codes which
threw the browser out.

I finally got the following to work nicely for me in MicroCrash FP with IE
6.0.2800
I used the little downloadable app, and a bit of editing to hide it in JS

script type="text/javascript"

document.write("<a href=mailto:");

document.write("arwooldrid&
#103;e4@o2.co.uk>");

document.write("email arwooldridge");

document.write("@o2.co.uk</a>");

/script

I could have obfuscated the plain text a little more but I don't think the
robots will find anything in there.

Everything works fine as expected in the browser.

Regards
Anthony Wooldridge

The JS is another good idea. The more you do to foil crafty
spammers, the better. Better make sure it works on all browsers
though. IE has a looser interpretation of the DOM than NS which
requires fully qualified objects or whatever I'm trying to say. IE
makes a best guess at the object nearest your code if there's a
scope resolution ambiguity. document.write(), IIRC shouldn't screw
up NS too bad.
--
Best Regards,
Mike

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