Is Your Website Attracting Spam Emailers?
How much time do you and your employees waste deleting or managing spam email? The simple answer is business-universal: too much!
Dealing with unwanted mail is annoying, at best. But is your website contributing to the problem? If you are not hiding your email addresses properly on your website you might as well be sending out an invitation to spammers.
Why You Should Obfuscate Email Addresses
If you display full, traditional email addresses on your web site you are going to get spam email. Spam robots are very efficient at reading text seen by site visitors and HTML code and “harvesting” (collecting data) email addresses.Once harvested, your email address will be targeted by spammers and may even be sold or passed along to other spammers. This practice is illegal under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, but the legal remedies do not deter spam robots – or the unscrupulous spammers behind them.
- Fines and Criminal Penalties Under CAN-SPAM Act of 2003: The Department of Justice has the authority to enforce criminal sanctions against commercial emailers. Criminal penalties include imprisonment to those who violate, or conspire to violate anti-spamming laws.
- How to Track Down Spammers and File a Complaint: As long as a spammer still has an active website or email address they can often be tracked down. This case study in a new SEO phishing scam by a company using the domain name darcyco.net shows how you can track down an email spammer and file a complaint.
Can You Read This Email Address?
The following example is a basic HTML code for generating a hyperlink to an email address that shows "Email Me" as the hyperlink text:
<a href="mailto:mailbox@mydomain.com">Email Me</a>
If you can read the email address in the code, so can a robot.
Can you find the email address in the example below?
To contact our Super Woman Department email superwoman@mydomain.com.
Even if you obfuscate HTML code (or, do not use a hyperlink) if you have your email address displayed for readers -- robots can still harvest the address.
If you are using obvious, unobfuscated email links and addresses on your website or blog, stop!
