Email harvesting measures

How to prevent bots from harvesting email addresses from a site?

Encode or obfuscate

• Use JavaScript to display the email address dynamically, as bots often don't execute JavaScript
• Encode the email address using HTML entities (e.g., @ for @ and . for .)
• Encode the email address through CSS or some base64 format.

Example: The script assembles the email address. the part displays the email address.

<script>
  document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() {
    var user = "example";
    var domain = "domain.com";
    var email = user + "@" + domain;
    document.getElementById("email").innerHTML = '<a href="mailto:' + email + '">' + email + '</a>';
  });
</script>
<span id="email"></span>

Use anti-spam plugin

• Install a plugin like Email Address Encoder to automatically obfuscate email addresses on your site
• Use plugins like WP Spamshield or similar, which provide additional anti-spam protections

Use a contact form

Replace the email address with a contact form like WPForms, Contact Form 7, or Gravity Forms

Display email address in an image

• Create an image of the email address and display the image in the footer
• Note: This can inconvenience users who need to type it manually.