2004/04/28
Stay away, spambot!
Is the name "Galoot" at the top of this page clickable? If it is, you have javascript enabled and can use it to send me mail. (But don't. Odds are I'll just delete it unless you're: a) offering me money or sex, and b) not Nigerian or arsidubu.) If it isn't clickable then, well, you can't e-mail me. Get over it.
Q: Why the hell do you use javascript on your page, you dumb galoot?
A: Because I don't want spam. You can read it and you can click it, but address-harvesting spambots get discrete little bits of my address ("pixelarts" and "@" and "sh" and "aw.ca") all mixed up on several different lines.
Q: I've already got my address munged and it looks like "mailto...". Why's your way better, huh?
A: I don't know that it is better. In some ways it's worse, because if you don't have javascript enabled you can't click on "Galoot" to reach me.
But I do know that it's a simple matter of telling a spambot to take every "a" and change it to "a" and every "b" and change it to "b" and so on.
It's not so simple to tell a bot to pull tiny bits of the page out and reassemble them to make a valid e-mail address.
Here's the javascript I use to display my cut-up address to bots while letting your browser (and you) see the real deal.
Anything you put between the <NOSCRIPT> tags is readable by people who have javascript disabled. It's also readable by bots, of course.
Q: Christ, man! You're a bloody genius!
A: Why, yes. Yes I am. But in this particular case I just stole the idea from here. My own genius lies in creative mockery, not javascript.
If you have other ideas for making a clickable mailto: link that spambots can't scan, let me know.
Q: Why the hell do you use javascript on your page, you dumb galoot?
A: Because I don't want spam. You can read it and you can click it, but address-harvesting spambots get discrete little bits of my address ("pixelarts" and "@" and "sh" and "aw.ca") all mixed up on several different lines.
Q: I've already got my address munged and it looks like "mailto...". Why's your way better, huh?
A: I don't know that it is better. In some ways it's worse, because if you don't have javascript enabled you can't click on "Galoot" to reach me.
But I do know that it's a simple matter of telling a spambot to take every "a" and change it to "a" and every "b" and change it to "b" and so on.
It's not so simple to tell a bot to pull tiny bits of the page out and reassemble them to make a valid e-mail address.
Here's the javascript I use to display my cut-up address to bots while letting your browser (and you) see the real deal.
<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
<!--
spooisoopsbackwards='aw.ca'
spooisoopsbackwards=('sh' + spooisoopsbackwards)
spooisoopsbackwards=('pixelarts' + '@' + spooisoopsbackwards)
document.write('<A href="mailto:' + spooisoopsbackwards + '">' + 'Galoot' + '</a>')
//-->
</script><NOSCRIPT>Galoot</NOSCRIPT>
Anything you put between the <NOSCRIPT> tags is readable by people who have javascript disabled. It's also readable by bots, of course.
Q: Christ, man! You're a bloody genius!
A: Why, yes. Yes I am. But in this particular case I just stole the idea from here. My own genius lies in creative mockery, not javascript.
If you have other ideas for making a clickable mailto: link that spambots can't scan, let me know.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
