Email Scrambler? What the heck is that and why might I want to use it?

Well, let's start with the why. Ever notice all that junk email you get? Ever wonder where they get your email address? Well, one goldmine is web pages. Someone uses a program called an email harvester that downloads the text of web pages at high speed, scans them for email addresses, and quickly gathers up an obscene number of them. Those email addresses are then sold to to your friendly neighborhood spammer.

If you have a web page and your email address is on it... it's probably been picked. I read a study somewhere on the subject and found that by far, more email addresses are collected this way than any other.

So, you starting to get the idea behind an email scrambler? It's a neat little gizmo that takes the info you'd use to build a normal mailto link, and scrambles it with javascript so that the scumsuckers, I mean spammers, can't harvest the email address. The harvester only sees javascript code, but humans see the email address rendered in their browser in a perfectly normal fashion. It's kinda cool actually.

Anyhow... below is the scrambler. Fill in your info and hit the button. Code will be generated for you and you can paste it into your web page. It's pretty self explanatory. Have fun!

If multiple email links on the page contain the same information (email, link text, subject line and status bar message), then you can re-use this code as many times as you wish throughout the page. For different links, you'll have to generate different code.

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">
function unScramble(eMail1,eMail2,linkText,subjectText,statusText){
var a,b,c,d,e;a=eMail1;c=linkText;b=eMail2.substring(0,eMail2.length-5);
if(subjectText!=""){d="?subject="+escape(subjectText);}else{d="";}
if(statusText!=""){e=" onMouseOver=\"top.status=\'"+statusText+
"\'\;return true\;\" onMouseOut=\"top.status=\'\'\;return true\;\"";}else{e="";}
document.write("<A HREF=\"mai"+"lto:"+a+"@"+b+d+"\""+e+">"+c+"</A>");}
</SCRIPT>

You only need to do this once. The above bit of code will process any and all scrambled email links you have on that page. If you have multiple pages, place this code in the HEAD section of each page. (or reference an external js file... this is covered in Javascript Tutor)

1) Subjects... A few (probably very few) visitors may have email clients that freak out over the use of a Subject in a mailto link. In those rare cases the email message *might* disapear into oblivion...
The solution? Leave the subject blank. (duh ;-)

2) Javascript... A few (again probably very few) visitors may have javascript turned off in their browser. We've tried to help those lost souls out by including a NOSCRIPT section that basically writes to the page... Email me: me/ÄT/myhome/DÖT/-c-o-m-/. They will then have to unfudge the email address manually and send you email. Hopefully it's fudged enough so that a harvester will pass it by, yet simple enough for your visitor to figure it out.

3) Mailto links in general... mailto links are great. But just imagine if your visitor is at a library using a computer set up for the general public that does NOT have an email client installed or has the email capability disabled... then what? Using a server based form to get feedback from your site, in addition to a mailto link, is always a fine idea.

3) Download a version of Email Scrambler so you can use it without needing to be online.