WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: obfuscating email addresses

for

From: Scott González
Date: Feb 20, 2015 9:00AM

GitHub just encodes every character and I don't think they've had any
issues with bots. Here's what the code for my email address looks like on
their site:

<a class="email" href="
mailto:&#x73;&#x63;&#x6f;&#x74;&#x74;&#x2e;&#x67;&#x6f;&#x6e;&#x7a;&#x61;&#x6c;&#x65;&#x7a;&#x40;&#x67;&#x6d;&#x61;&#x69;&#x6c;&#x2e;&#x63;&#x6f;&#x6d;
< <EMAIL REMOVED> >">
&#x73;&#x63;&#x6f;&#x74;&#x74;&#x2e;&#x67;&#x6f;&#x6e;&#x7a;&#x61;&#x6c;&#x65;&#x7a;&#x40;&#x67;&#x6d;&#x61;&#x69;&#x6c;&#x2e;&#x63;&#x6f;&#x6d;
</a>

On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Jeremy Merritt < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I have been asked to look into ways to obfuscate email addresses made
> available online so that automated bots and email harvesters have a more
> difficult time collecting. I realize that obfuscating email addresses is a
> controversial subject and is not foolproof, but alas I have been tasked
> with coming up with some recommendations.
>
> It is important to us that any solution does not make email addresses
> inaccessible to legitimate users. I've read a number of (old) articles on
> methods to obfuscate email addresses, such as
> http://doteduguru.com/id415-e-mail-obfuscation.html . In this blog, the
> author suggests that some simple (and reportedly effective) methodologies
> make the email addresses inaccessible to users of screen readers. However,
> in my testing using the current (trial) version of JAWS, I haven't found
> this to be the case.
>
> I put 4 email addresses up on a simple web page at
> http://wiu.edu/users/mujtm6/spam/ and was able to hear the correct email
> addresses when I tested the site in JAWS. Each of these email addresses
> uses a different method for "obfuscating" the email in some way. The
> pertinent source code is below. As I am not a very savvy screen reader
> user, I would like some feedback from some of you that are more familiar.
> Do any of these cause accessibility problems?
>
>
> [CODE BELOW]
>
> <ul>
> <li><span class="nospam"><span class="u">william</span><span
> class="at">@</span><span class="d">domain.com</span></span></li>
> <li>john<span style="display:none;">bogus</span> <EMAIL REMOVED> </li>
> <li>robert&#64;domain&#46;com</li>
> <li>sally@<!--bogus-->domain.com </li>
> </ul>
>
> [END CODE]
>
>
> Best,
>
> Jeremy
> > > >