About
obuscatr is email address obfuscator that you can use online or on your Mac OS X Dashboard.
Its purpose is to disguise spam bots by providing you with an encoded email that you can paste to your home page or a blog so that the email couldn't be picked up by these bots.
The code provided by obuscatr consists of a <script> tag with hexadecimal representation of an email mailto link. As Googlebot and other bots don't render client-side scripts the email in such form will also be excluded from the search results.
As of version 1.1.0 you also have an option to encode an email without JavaScript. In this case your email will be encoded to something like %6d%79%40%65%6d%61%69%6c%2e%63%6f%6d. In this case a link to your email would look like this: <a href="mailto:%6d%79%40%65%6d%61%69%6c%2e%63%6f%6d">Mail me<a>.
To use this option just tick off the checkbox on the back side of the widget.
More on reasons to use obfuscatr. Also, see the news on flash tekkie.
Awards & references:
Further reading:
Where spam comes from (BBC News)
Email Address Harvesting and
the Effectiveness of Anti-Spam Filters (US Federal Trade Commission's Division of Marketing Practices)
Address munging (Wikipedia)
Download
Widget's size is 18 KB.
On your Dashboard it will look like this:
Changelog:
- Mac OS X Leopard support
- Optional JavaScript obfuscation
Why?
Q: Why are so many of us afraid of making their email address accessible?
Latest studies show that over 97% of the spam is being sent to addresses that have been posted on public websites. In most cases they look like this:
<a href="mailto:me@mydomain.com">me@mydomain.com</a>
or even without a link:
me@mydomain.com
Q: So how should I post the email then?
1st option:
post the email like me [at] mydomain.com or replace an @ sign with a respective graphic. You can't click it, it's not a link and New message window is not going to pop up. So your client, a friend or mom just has to remember it for a minute, open the the New email window and type it in. Yes, it's clumsy and it might not work. Spammers are smart.
2nd option:
call your IT. Tell him to use DNSBL, install SpamAssassin, configure the mail server to make rDNS and investigate the possibilities of using DEA. Excuse me, what was that again? Right. Let's just move on.
3rd option:
Use address munging.
Q: What is address munging and why?
One of the most common ways for the spammers to get your email address is to use a specific software, an harvesting bot, that spiders websites, public mailing list archives or any other sites for emails.
Address munging would basically mean changing your email address into something they can't detect. It is an obfuscation process.
Q: How do I obfuscate an email?
Use obfuscatr. It turns your email into a bunch of code that you can copy and paste to your site.
If you are using Mac, you may also want to download obfuscatr Dashboard widget
Obfuscate!
- Enter your email into the box below
- Click on 'Obfuscate!'
- The obfuscation of your email will appear in the box
- Copy and paste the code from a box to a website or a blog
For much more convenient use click here for the obuscatr Dashboard widget.
Widget is available for Mac OS users only.
Contact
Your comments, ideas, support requests and bug reports are most welcome at .
Alternatively you may click here to make a call or leave a note/voicemail on Skype
