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75

Unfortunately, what this doesn't show is the number of real users who avoided sending email because the address was hard to retrieve in the various formats. I'm sure that number would be small, but it's unlikely to be zero
– Gareth
Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 12:02
22

@Gareth: the real-email-addresss is plainly visible with methods 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8, with 2 and 5 they are (re)built by jscript and are again clearly visible and even work with "mailto:" (coz the jscript modifies the dom so it all looks good). you will notice that the most effective methods are the ones that result in "the user has to do nothing to read / interpret" the mailaddress. "visible" means "you can just copy N paste the email off your browser.
– akira
Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 13:53
15

I'd like to see this study redone with methods that produce mailto: links rather than simple text email addresses. A spambot might react differently if it sees a mailto: with an obfuscated address in, whether the de-obfuscation is done by JS or human intervention - it's a strong hint there's a mail address there - but mailto: links are a lot more useful to readers.
– ijw
Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 17:00
63

When I copied the rtl example on the linked page (Chrome 8, Mac), moc.etalllit@7raboofnavlis ended up on my clipboard. So, maybe this is not so practical for real-world use.
– s4y
Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 18:14
4

It's a shame that the rtl idea is not compatible with simple copy/paste, it was a creative solution.
– wildpeaks
Commented Jan 25, 2011 at 15:32

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create code fences with backticks ` or tildes ~
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like so
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```python
def function(foo):
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```
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