Cryptic Text

If you need a quick, simple way to hide your email address from harvesters, you can spell out the address in such a way that harvesters won't recognize it, for example:

To contact me, send an email to "nospam _AT_ mediacollege _DOT_COM"

This doesn't provide any sort of direct link or assistance — the user is expected to decipher the correct address, then open their email client, create a new email and manually enter the address.

The disadvantages of this method are clear:

1. It entails an effort for the user.
2. It's ugly and confusing for many people.

Depending on the situation, you could include a short explanation to minimize confusion and annoyance.

It's worth noting that spam harvesters improve all the time. Some harvesters are able to decipher common variations of email addresses so you might have to be creative to stay safe.

On the upside, this method is very quick and easy — ideal for temporary or unimportant pages. This method is often used in discussion forum messages (where it's just about the only option anyway).

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