2010-12-11 // Protect your email address with reCAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA is a well known service and used by many websites. But a little know feature is their email address protection service. Just enter your mail address, click on “Protect It!” and everyone who wants to see your address has to solve a CAPTCHA before it will be shown. You will get a common link1) and HTML source code where only a part of your mail address is replaced:2)
Examples, created with the address foobar@example.com
:
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01rhhtdpw4VPtj-ejfKMpwEw==&c=VGXKsGQ8aXgpBQISADqLu1SFbEYkjlSIeDbzeRHbKL4=
Simply copy & paste the URL or use something like “Click to see my address” when you are able to create links with custom text.
foo<a href="http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01rhhtdpw4VPtj-ejfKMpwEw==&c=VGXKsGQ8aXgpBQISADqLu1SFbEYkjlSIeDbzeRHbKL4=" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k\07501rhhtdpw4VPtj-ejfKMpwEw\75\75\46c\75VGXKsGQ8aXgpBQISADqLu1SFbEYkjlSIeDbzeRHbKL4\075', '', 'toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,location=0,statusbar=0,menubar=0,resizable=0,width=500,height=300'); return false;" title="Reveal this e-mail address">...</a>@example.com
This will produce something like “foo...@example.com”.
Actually an old hat, but I just saw tons of plain email addresses in a forum. The smarter ones replaced @/.
with [a]/[dot]
. While this is better then nothing, most bots should be intelligent enough to parse such replacements. reCAPTCHA FTW.