Do you hide email addresses to "spam bots" on websites?

Question

Although there are still bots harvesting emails, I'm wondering if you hide email addresses on websites. I know this was common practice a few years back, but it seems that it's starting to fade.

Reasons not to:

• most email servers include quality spam protection, including services such as Gmail and hardly any gets through
• it's annoying to code as you have to remember and searching to change the email later can be tricky
• no method will prevent any harvesting

Reasons to:

• avoid getting on lists you don't want to be a part of
• avoid some bots that are getting addresses for sending emails that can't be detected by spam (specific sales/marketing emails) or that technically aren't spam
• the client or your servers don't have great spam detection

Do or don't you and what are your reasons?

Answer 1

I do occassionally, depends on the email address and what the client might be using. As you say, a GMAIL address is usually pretty robust at spam filtering. Often I'll obfuscate the address though, like using a utility like Jason's above or a technique as shown below...

http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to-obfuscate-e-mail-addresses-compared/