No one wants an inbox full of spam, especially when they’re running a business website. And when customer queries are overshadowed by spam and phishing attempts, you’re left inconvenienced — and that’s putting it mildly. Not to mention, sorting through it all takes a lot of time that could be spent on other tasks.
While sharing your email address online is necessary to direct visitors towards your support and sales channels, it’s an open invitation for spambots, too. These automated programs crawl the web, collect public email addresses, and send a barrage of spam in the hopes that you or someone on your team takes the bait.
Thankfully, this can be prevented with a tactic known as email obfuscation. This technique disguises your email addresses, keeping them safe from spambots and protecting your business from unwanted messages.
So today, let’s explore email obfuscation in depth and explain how you can use it (alongside other methods) to improve your online security.
What is email obfuscation?
Email obfuscation is a technique used to mask email addresses so that they’re not as easily detected by spambots. When an email address is obfuscated, it’s still completely readable by humans, but is difficult for bots to recognize.
Malicious bots are constantly crawling the internet looking for emails to scrape and add to their spam lists, and email obfuscation is absolutely necessary to prevent spam. While this won’t help against targeted spam and phishing attempts, it will at least stop the bulk of automated spam attacks.
There are several ways to obfuscate an email on your site. Some methods include replacing parts of the email with HTML characters, or using JavaScript to dynamically display the email when the page is loaded. These make it a lot harder for simple bots to scrape your email. We’ll go into the details on how it works below.
Why is email obfuscation crucial for cybersecurity and spam prevention?
Email obfuscation might not seem all that important. It’s hard to understand how disruptive spam can be until you have an inbox full of it. And by then, it’s too late to do anything about it except change your email address entirely.
Here are some of the risks of leaving your email unobfuscated:
Email harvesting bots scraping your email
You don’t want your email on a scammer’s list. These are sold to spammers looking for active emails to send their junk mail to. If your email is out there long enough, it’s nearly inevitable, but you can use email obfuscation to delay it as long as possible.
Brute force attacks on your email account
Once attackers know your email, they can attempt to launch brute force attacks to access your account. When this happens, they’ll try as many passwords as possible, and break in. It’s best to hide your email from the automated programs that run these brute force attacks.
A spam‑filled inbox
Spam may seem like just an annoyance, but it can be devastating when it’s in full force. Genuine customers get drowned out and your inbox becomes impossible to sort through.
Being targeted by phishing attacks
Phishing occurs when an attacker tries to trick you into revealing sensitive info, like your email or website login info. Or, you might receive an email asking you to click a link or download an attachment that installs malware on your device and steals your info. Basic phishing attacks can be automated.
While you may know all about how to identify a scam, not everyone on your team might be so experienced. The more team members that have access to your business email, the more likely they’ll fall prey to phishing attempts.
And since over 55% of phishing emails now employ some form of obfuscation to evade detection — which marks a significant 24.4% increase from the previous year — it’s more important than ever to implement some level of prevention.
Common methods of email obfuscation
There are several ways to hide the email address on your website from bots while still allowing real customers and prospects to contact you. And the good news is you can employ one or all of them.
Use a contact form with spam protection
One of the most effective email obfuscation techniques is to avoid displaying your email online altogether. Instead, you can just use a contact form. Of course, contact forms have their own issues with spam, which is why you’ll need to use this alongside an anti‑spam solution like Akismet.
Akismet uses AI to scan all incoming form submissions and filter out unwanted, spammy messages with 99.99% effectiveness. No need for CAPTCHA or other obtrusive spam protection methods. Spam will never even reach your inbox when you use Akismet. And if you have a WordPress website, it comes pre-installed, which is pretty convenient.
Character replacement
This can be as simple as replacing the “@” in an email with “at”, or replacing the symbols with their HTML entities. So an email address like “test@example.com” becomes “test@example.com”.
This renders correctly for people who visit your website but parses as gibberish for bots. The downside is that it only works for very simple bots, so you should use it in conjunction with other methods.
Image-based obfuscation
Another simple solution is displaying your email as an image. Most bots can’t read images, so this can work pretty well. But it’s not user‑friendly at all since visitors have to type in your email manually. There are also serious accessibility concerns for those who use screen readers. Because of these reasons, this isn’t the best option to pursue.
JavaScript-based obfuscation
This is a more involved method, where the email is hidden in the site’s code and rendered dynamically. The email address can be hidden within the site’s HTML code and is only displayed when the page is loaded by a browser. This makes it a lot more challenging for bots to scrape this data.
There are more advanced bots out there, however, especially those running in a fully‑fledged browser environment that can bypass these methods. So that’s something to be aware of.
Encoding techniques
Encoding techniques involve converting an email address into a string of code that a browser can interpret, but that is difficult for bots to decode. A common method is Base64 encoding, where the email is transformed into a string of characters that can be decoded by the browser using JavaScript.
So, if you have an email like “example@example.com” it might be encoded into a string like “ZXhhbXBsZUBleGFtcGxlLmNvbQ==”. When the page loads, a script decodes this string back into a readable email address that people can interact with.
This method can be thwarted by more advanced bots though, so be mindful of that when putting a plan together to prevent spam.
How email obfuscation fits into a broader cybersecurity framework
Where there’s a website, there’s a risk of people trying to break into it. You don’t need to be running a huge enterprise website to be targeted by bad actors. In all actuality, hackers and spammers are more than happy to take advantage of the lax security on smaller sites.
That’s why cybersecurity should be a major concern of yours, whatever the size of your website. Digital threats, from spam to malware, are constantly evolving. And email obfuscation is just one piece of the puzzle that can put a stop to these threats.
Email obfuscation serves as a preventative measure, reducing the likelihood that your email will be harvested and used for spam and phishing attacks. While spam is just a nuisance, phishing can lead to losing your account or major data breaches. So if you make your email harder to find, it lowers the chances of you being targeted.
But email obfuscation isn’t enough on its own. It should complement other security measures. The anti‑spam tools offered by Akismet can detect and block malicious messages that do manage to slip through.
And you can further secure your online presence by setting up (and mandating) two‑factor authentication for you and your team, using strong passwords (and not reusing them), and keeping website and server software up to date. Firewalls and intrusion detection systems can also work to keep your site safe.
Besides that, providing cybersecurity training to your team (or thoroughly educating yourself if it’s just you) can help you recognize potential threats.
So email obfuscation is a valuable tool, yes, but it works best when integrated into a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.
The importance of layered security measures
There’s no one cybersecurity solution that will protect your entire online presence. So you’ll need to rely on multiple security measures that work together to create a more resilient defense.
Redundancy is something you might have heard of in reference to web hosting servers. In a redundant hosting setup, if one server fails, a backup server is ready to take its place and prevent downtime. It’s used a lot when talking about website backups, too. If one backup fails, there’s another saved in a different location to ensure your data isn’t lost.
This same concept of redundancy also applies to cybersecurity. If one layer of your defense fails, others are still in place to catch the threat.
So if spambots figure out how to bypass your email obfuscation, having an anti‑spam solution like Akismet will prevent that phishing email from reaching your inbox. And if it somehow does slip through that and your email spam filter, having two‑factor authentication in place will prevent the phishing attempt from being successful even if you do hand over your login credentials.
As cyberthreats are constantly becoming more sophisticated, this layered strategy is extremely important.
How Akismet’s spam protection complements email obfuscation
While email obfuscation can be an effective strategy for keeping your email address hidden from spambots, it’s not foolproof.
The issue with email obfuscation is that it’s static. Once you implement it, all attackers have to do is figure out how you’re hiding your email and update their bots to account for it. Then this method won’t work anymore. You can keep updating your methods, but it’s tedious to have to stay a step ahead of potential threats at all times.
That’s why Akismet’s spam protection is such a preferred choice. Akismet is a spam protection platform that analyzes incoming messages for common spam patterns and then blocks spam immediately.
And the big difference is that it’s dynamic, not static. Akismet is powered by machine learning that’s been trained on a dataset of billions of pieces of spam. As spammers use new methods to evade filters, Akismet learns in real‑time, updating itself to respond to new threats.
And that’s all done without any input needed from you, or your visitors. Unlike CAPTCHA, which can slow down and annoy your users, Akismet runs non‑intrusively in the background.
As we mentioned, a layered cybersecurity strategy is the best way to keep spam, phishing, and malware far away from your website. And while email obfuscation alone is not enough to protect yourself, combining it with Akismet makes for the best way to safeguard your email address online.
Real‑world examples where Akismet has effectively reduced spam
Akismet has proven to be a powerful tool in the fight against spam, helping countless businesses and individuals alike protect themselves. 100 million sites have used Akismet to block more than 500 billion pieces of spam.
We’ve released a few case studies showcasing real‑world examples where Akismet has made a significant impact.
One is the ConvertKit case study, which explores how the marketing platform protected over 400,000 creators from spam. Lower billing fees and less email reputation damage meant happier ConvertKit customers, and the switch to Akismet was a major success. It just proves how well Akismet works for enterprise‑grade anti‑spam.
Akismet also helped Smitten Kitchen block 2.3 million pieces of spam. Major websites like this can end up with thousands of comments per post and no easy way to filter them manually.
Thankfully, Akismet saved Smitten Kitchen from a spam disaster by blocking spam from ever reaching their inbox.
Frequently asked questions
This guide has covered what you need to know about email obfuscation and why it plays a key part in spam prevention. But in case you have any lingering questions, here are some answers to commonly asked questions about both email obfuscation and spam.
What are the risks associated with unprotected email addresses?
Failing to protect your email address leaves it vulnerable to spambots that crawl the web and capture them. Once your email is scraped, you can become a target for spam, phishing, and even brute force attacks.
Besides filling your inbox with unwanted emails, you also risk losing your account if you fall for a phishing email or hackers manage to break in.
Can email obfuscation completely prevent spam?
Email obfuscation can reduce the risk of your email address being collected, but it’s not 100% effective. Advanced bots can easily evade obfuscation tactics. That’s why it’s important to pair obfuscation with other security measures, like spam filters.
How does email obfuscation impact the user experience on a website?
When done correctly, email obfuscation should have minimal impact on user experience. Users should still be able to see and copy your email address. But some methods, like using image‑based obfuscation makes for a negative user experience that’s terrible for accessibility.
What are the best practices for implementing email obfuscation?
It’s best to avoid user‑unfriendly obfuscation tactics like image‑based email obfuscation, and instead use tactics like character replacement, JavaScript, or encoding. But the best way of all is to forgo posting your email and instead use a contact form with spam protection like what’s offered by Akismet.
How can I also protect my contact forms from spam?
Akismet is a highly effective way to protect your contact forms from spam. Akismet automatically filters out spam submissions, ensuring that only legitimate messages reach your inbox. And since you’re using a contact form, your email is hidden.
How accurate is Akismet at stopping spam?
Akismet is incredibly accurate at identifying and filtering out spam. It’s actually 99.99% effective. It uses advanced algorithms and machine learning to detect a majority of spam. While no system is perfect, Akismet’s track record speaks for itself, with millions of spam messages blocked daily across millions of websites.
How many sites use Akismet?
Over 100 million sites worldwide use Akismet to protect their online presence from spam. Well‑known brands like Microsoft, Bluehost, WordPress.com, and ConvertKit rely on Akismet to keep their platforms clean.
Where can I learn more about Akismet?
You can learn more about Akismet on our features page and the rest of the website. This will explain everything you need to know about the platform. You can also check the pricing page.
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