Starting an online shop is always an exciting thing. Presenting your own idea to the big, wide world and hopefully making decent sales with it is the dream of every start-up. But if you make this little beginner's mistake, you'll quickly get more electronic mail than you'd like: your email address unprotected on the website present. Generally, as a trader and website operator, you have to implement the legal requirements. These tips here are more suitable for private use.
Why provide the email address at all?
Providing full contact details is not only practical. Above all it is obligatory. Only 10 years ago, lawyers who were eager to issue warnings drove countless shop operators crazy with obscure but legally correct claims. Today, providing a complete imprint - and this includes an email address - is part of the basics of online commerce. This also applies to platform-based shops such as Ebay or Amazon dealers.
Ultimately, however, it is also quite simply sensible to provide a valid email address. How else should a professional customer contact be established? No form of communication is as cheap, fast, immediate and comprehensible as an email.
And what is the danger?
From a wonderfully silly sketch by the British comedy troupe "Monthy Pyhon" an unpleasant side effect of modern communication is derived: Spam. This doesn't mean canned meat, which was its original meaning, but annoying promotional emails and worst of all malware messengers that can cause an inbox to overflow. A clogged inbox makes the user miss the important mails, which in turn is harmful for the business.
But the spam mail senders first have to get the email address from somewhere. This is done by so-called "bots" for them. Derived from the word "robots", these are small programs that systematically scan web pages and collect everything that looks like an email. Of course, the "@" is especially telltale. Since this special character practically only occurs in email addresses, the marker for the bot is set sufficiently. But you can protect yourself.
Ten ways to protect the e-mail address
1. avoid the @.
A simple way to disguise your email address is to omit the @ and use a synonym instead. The small A in brackets has become established for this. It is relatively indifferent which brackets are used: ; (a) or [a] are equally popular. Instead of the a, the onomatopoeic "ad" is also used. An extended protection can be obtained by replacing the dot by a meaningful character string, e.g. by DOT or PUNKT. For spam bots this barrier is no longer a problem. Most programs can immediately identify the bracketed A as @.
2. working with images
This encryption is as simple as it is secure. Instead of a copyable email address, you simply insert a small image in which it is visible. For the law this is enough. There are spam bots that work with text recognition software. But if the email address is sufficiently stylized, they will bite their teeth out. A little tip: Write the email address in cursive on squared paper and take a picture. But it must still be readable for the human eye.
3. remove page with content of the email from the Google index
There is an easy way for example under WordPress with an additional plugin like Yoast or Rankmath not to include individual pages in the index. Google will then not take the page in the index.
4. replacement by file URLs and subsequent redirect
With this procedure, no email address is entered at all and an email program is started with the help of a hyperlink. Somewhat annoying about this solution is that a permanently installed email program such as Outlook or Thunderbird must be available. This solution does not work with interested parties who only work with browser-based email communication.
5. concealment by adding characters
This solution is intended for professional JAVASCRIPT programmers. The email address is displayed in the browser, but when copying it, you will only get unreadable data junk. This is a bit annoying for end users, because the email address has to be typed by hand. But spam bots are still overstrained with this solution. There are numerous online tools available on the net to extend the address.
6. concealment by hiding characters
Provided that it is recognizable for the user, it is possible to work with quasi false email addresses. The solution Info@fitnessclub de is legal, if it is pointed out that the "." must still be supplemented.
7. obfuscation through dynamic composition of the address
This, also JAVASCRIPT-based solution makes the email address visible in the browser. In the HTML tag in the background, however, the address is spread over several lines. This makes it impossible for the spam bot to decipher them. This solution is quite secure, but only works with JAVASCRIPT enabled.
8. concealment of the e-mail address via CAPTCHAs
The specification of the email address under the condition of entering an encrypted string in a field has proved to be very useful. These non-machine-readable characters are an insurmountable hurdle for spam bots, but can be somewhat annoying for the user.
9. encryption of the email address
The ROT16 procedure is a suitable tool to make email addresses unreadable for SPAM bots. However, it requires some background knowledge. The advantage of this method is that it can add the SPAM bot to a blacklist. This way the website can be protected against further access attempts from this location.
10. do without encryption
Finally, there is of course still the possibility to do without encryption completely. Readability and accessibility can in some cases be so important that any encryption runs counter to the goal of the website. The secondary consequences must be accepted - especially the careful handling of all emails that contain a forwarding or an attachment. But if you can estimate the risk, there is nothing against an unencrypted display of the email address on your own imprint.
Which encryption method to use?
For laymen and people who prefer to deal with the content of their online presence instead of the annoying programming, image, captcha, and contact form procedures are recommended. These are very secure and have an acceptable additional effort for the end user. The replacement of the @ is actually outdated in the meantime. Modern spam bots easily circumvent this hurdle if they are not created carefully enough. Cryptifying email addresses as a brainchild for the interested party, on the other hand, is only partially acceptable to many. Complex encryption procedures or redirects, on the other hand, are only interesting for real programming professionals.
But the arms race between website operators and SPAM mail senders will continue. But sometimes it is worthwhile to take a look at the alleged SPAM. Maybe there will be an interesting offer every now and then.
Conclusion
As a trader, you are forced to include your contact details in an imprint or privacy policy. Here are then few possibilities to hide the address for bots. Therefore, instead of disguising email addresses on the website, you should rather use a suitable spam protection that reliably filters out spam, such as the spam protection gateway from Spame Experts.
