AddressTangler is a PHP function that helps you protect email addresses that you need to add to a web page from spam bots.
The project uses a simple HTML/CSS trick: The email address is divided into groups of letters, then each group is placed on a table cell, but not sequentially. If a bot browses the HTML code or strips out all the tags from it, it won't find the email address (which is shown correctly when the browser displays the page) but instead a mixed set of groups of letters.
The address, even if correctly displayed, cannot be selected nor copied/pasted. It must be manually typed.
How to use it
It is quite easy to use this function. You only need to give it the email address as a parameter, and it will return the HTML TABLE code.
Remember to copy the at.php file to your webpage folder and add a line like this to the beginning of your PHP code:
require "at.php";
Also remember to add the CSS definition for the table cells to the page with class "at_r1" as follows:
TD.at_r1 {vertical-align:bottom;}
(Note: since the result is a simple HTML table, you don't need to use this function if your page is made with just HTML. You can simply copy the HTML code written on this page and correct it according to the email address that you need to display.)
Limitations:
· Keep in mind that not only spam bots will have trouble detecting the email address: the text-to-speech software used by blind users will likely also be affected.
· So, if you plan to make your email address accessible to them, you must provide a second way to publish it. At the present time, this is out of the scope of this project. (perhaps in the future...)
· A possible solution could be to try to describe the address. But even if this results in a high security level, it would be hard to implement it into an automatic function. Also, it could be annoying to hear and complex to understand when used with addresses that make use of many random numbers and letters.
Product's homepage
Find us on Google+
