Preventing eMail scraping and Skimming

BB Theme
1

I’d love to be able to prevent email address scraping and skimming by bots and crawlers for my email address with BB. However, when I try to put in code that will “mask” my email address for Settings -> Social Links -> email address, the BB structure seems to strip it out, and it appears as my straight-way email address.

Any ideas on how to “mask” my email address to prevent the problem of scraping/skimming to prevent SPAM coming in?

Nick

2

Hey Nick,

Sorry, but the way that field works is, our theme just gets the text there and adds mailto: to convert it to an email link. Do you mind sharing how you’re masking it?

I’ve a few suggestions:

  1. Instead of using the email field under Social icons, you can just place the link manually by using Text as content for your header/footer.
  2. Just remove your email from the site and use a contact form instead.

Ben

3

HI Ben, thanks for the suggestions for the workaround.

Here’s a sample of what I was trying to put in the email social icons field in BB.

nic<span style=“display:inline;”>k@bo</span><span style=“display:inline;”>un</span><span style=“text-align:justify;display:inline;”>dl</span><span style=“text-align:left;display:inline;”>e</span><span style=“text-align:justify;display:inline;”>s</span><span style=“display:inline;text-wrap:none;”>ssu</span><span style=“display:inline;text-align:center;”>c</span><span style=“display:inline;”>c</span><span style=“display:inline;”>e</span><span style=“display:inline;text-align:center;”>ss</span><span style=“display:inline;”>.</span><span style=“text-align:left;display:inline;”>c</span>om

4

Hey Nick,

No worries! Yep, that’s not going to be possible as the text in that field gets attached to the mailto: link. Anyway, have fun with BB! :slight_smile:

Ben

5

Hi Ben Carlo,
I also am a little worried about email scraping from spammer robots.

Could you confirm me the CONTACT FORM module of BB COVER the mail putted in the “sent to email” field?
Because if I see the source code, the amil shows on clear, but I am not sure if the source code is generated only in the local browser…

thanks

6

Hey Enrico,

I’ve already filed an enhancement report for it. We should be able to make it work without the email on the markup. Thanks for the heads up! :slight_smile:

Ben

7

Hi Ben,
wonderful, I hope the developers will build this upgrade soon,
bye!