DamSpam!
Spam is a growing concern on the Web. Sometimes such a problem that small business owners feel compelled to change their e-mail addresses - even knowing that doing so will have a price in lost business as customers try to reach them at old addresses.
There are a variety of solutions that can be implemented to avoid such unfortunate measures. Your web hosting provider and internet service provider should offer some level of spam filtering. This can be enhanced by use of filtering on your own computers.
Protect your addresses
While filtering helps, it still only deals with spam as it comes to you. Better yet is to prevent your e-mail addresses from ever getting onto spammer's lists. A number of solutions are commonly used to this end.
Forms
Many webmasters turn to forms as a solution, but if you look at the source code of such forms you may find an e-mail address there in plain text! Such forms are mere placebos for the unknowing web site owner. E-mail address harvesting bots don't see the web page like you do, they read the source code. If you are having a form-type solution implemented, make sure your web developer uses form-handling that does not require your e-mail address to appear in the source code of the web page containing the form.
Obfuscation with clickable links
Another common method of dealing with bots is to obfuscate the address, such as by putting "at" in place of "@" or by using images to display the e-mail address. If either of these methods is used to produce a clickable e-mail link, you will most likely find the actual e-mail address in the source code of the web page. Again a mere placebo for the unknowing web site owner.
Obfuscation without clickable links
Use of obfuscation or images for e-mail addresses can give protection if they present the address to the user but do not provide a clickable link. The disadvantage to this approach is that the web site visitor must enter the e-mail address manually into their message. This introduces a possible source of error and break-down of communication. How many customers, if they mis-type the e-mail address, will understand the "undeliverable" error message they receive from the mail server? To make matters worse, the value of obfuscating the text of your e-mail address is questionable as a method of protection. Spammers can easily program a bot to deal with addresses obfuscated in common ways. Less common ways require lengthy explanation to your site's visitors.
Trades West implements a better way - DamSpam!
Javascript is everywhere on the web. To spammers, who count on sending enormous volumes of spam to make any sales, it is not worth the time to process javascript on the off-chance that e-mail addresses might be generated.
DamSpam uses a javascript file separate from your web pages so that e-mail links can be generated anywhere in the site using simple yet versatile function calls. The function calls are all a bot sees in the source code of your web pages. Even if a bot were to scan the text of the javascript file, nothing there gives any indication of being anything to do with e-mail.
Your e-mail addresses are protected within nested arrays and literally do not exist until the javascript is processed in a web browser. The user sees the e-mail link on their screen and need only click the link to send you an e-mail. Even then, viewing the document source (what a bot sees) still only shows the javascript function call.
The DamSpam script is versatile enough that the visible links to an e-mail address can appear as whatever you like! In one place you may choose to display the e-mail address itself, in the next it may appear as something like . Whatever you choose for your links to say, all your site visitor need do to contact you is click the link.
As you may imagine, coding nested arrays for all the addresses in a web site is painstaking work. This is where the other half of the DamSpam solution comes into play! In conjunction with the DamSpam script, is a program that automates generation of the javascript file. This program makes creating new or updated DamSpam scripts as easy as typing a list of names and addresses. I use the program for web sites I maintain, or can provide the program to you or whoever looks after your website.
