Address Munging - Alternatives

Alternatives

As an alternative to address munging, there are several "transparent" techniques that allow people to post a valid e-mail address, but still make it difficult for automated recognition and collection of the address:

• "Transparent name mangling" involves replacing characters in the address with equivalent HTML references from the list of XML and HTML character entity references.
• Posting all or part of the e-mail address as an image.
• Using a client-side form with the e-mail address as a CSS3 animated text logo captcha and shrinking it to normal size using inline CSS.
• Posting an e-mail address with the order of characters jumbled and restoring the order using CSS.
• Building the link by client-side scripting.
• Using server-side scripting to run a contact form.

An example of munging "user@example.com" via client-side scripting would be:

The use of images and scripts for address obfuscation can cause problems for people using screen readers and users with disabilities, and ignores users of text browsers like lynx and w3m, although being transparent means they don't disadvantage non-English speakers that cannot understand the plain text bound to a single language that is part of non-transparent munged addresses or instructions that accompany them.

According to a 2003 study by the Center for Democracy and Technology, even the simplest "transparent name mangling" of e-mail addresses can be effective.