Email obfuscation: What works in 2026? (spencermortensen.com)

Article summary

The article discusses various techniques for email address obfuscation to prevent spam harvesting, including HTML entities, JavaScript concatenation, and CSS display none. The author presents statistics on the effectiveness of each technique, with some methods blocking up to 100% of harvesters. The article also notes that spammers often obtain email addresses through data breaches rather than web scraping. The author's methodology involves using a honeypot to test the effectiveness of each technique.

Main themes

• Email address obfuscation
• Spam harvesting prevention
• HTML and JavaScript techniques
• CSS and accessibility
• Data breaches and spam
• Spam filtering and detection

What commenters say

• Using email address obfuscation techniques can be effective in preventing spam, despite some arguing that spammers can easily bypass them.
• The majority of spam emails come from data breaches rather than web scraping, making obfuscation techniques less relevant.
• Some commenters argue that spam filters are sufficient and that obfuscation techniques are unnecessary, while others believe that a combination of both is the best approach.
• The use of machine learning models to generate and detect spam emails is an ongoing arms race, with some arguing that detection models can keep up with generation models.
• Obfuscation techniques can be inaccessible to visually impaired users, and alternative methods such as providing a contact form or phone number may be more effective.
• The effectiveness of obfuscation techniques can vary depending on the specific implementation and the type of spammer, with some techniques being more effective against basic harvesters than others.
• Some argue that the use of plus addressing or catch-all email addresses can be an effective way to filter out spam, while others believe that spammers can easily adapt to these methods.
• The article's methodology and statistics are useful for understanding the effectiveness of different obfuscation techniques, but may not be generalizable to all situations.