Anti-Spam Update: Encode email addresses on public pages from bots

June 2, 2022

Since the Anti-Spam version 5.177, we’ve added a new feature. Now you can encode all email addresses on your pages. Email characters will be hidden visually and addresses will be encoded, so the automatic crawlers will not be able to grab addresses. Visitors can decode addresses by mouse click. This feature helps to prevent direct spam to your email. You can enable this option in the Data Processing section here:

WordPress Dashboard → Settings → Anti-Spam by Cleantalk → Advanced settings

The plugin will encode all email addresses on your pages.

Original view:

Encoded view:

After clicking the address will be decoded:

That’s really how it works. Give it a try and protect all your email addresses on the website.

How to check the encryption already works

Open your webpage in your browser Guest (Incognito) mode.
Scroll down the page to the email address. Now you should see the email is already encrypted.

To decrypt it, just click on it. If you hover the mouse pointer over the email, you will see the “This contact was encoded by CleanTalk. Click to decode” message. It is a hint for your website visitors. Be sure to test the encryption/decryption in Guest (Incognito) mode, because if you are authorized on the site, there will be no encryption.

Encrypted view (Incognito mode)	Decrypted view (or authorized)

Since version 5.184 of the Anti-Spam plugin, each email encoding is logged in your Anti-Spam Log with the status “Decoding approved”.

Feel free to ask your questions in the comments below or email us at we*****@cl*******.org 🙂 If you see the email address in full, you probably didn’t switch to incognito mode in your browser.

Comments

9 responses to “Anti-Spam Update: Encode email addresses on public pages from bots”

June 13, 2022

Mark C. Peyko

Thanks!

Reply
June 14, 2022

Susan

Hey,
This is a great option, much appreciated!
Question: Is it functioning on pages only? I just enabled it on a client site but on this particular site the contact details are only viewable on posts & I can see no change to the information.
Many thanks,
Susan

Reply
June 14, 2022

Kate

Hello, Susan.
The “Encode contact data” option works with emails in Posts.
If you faced any issues with that please contact us via our support system and provide us with more details: https://cleantalk.org/my/support/open.

Reply
September 6, 2022

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December 13, 2022

Charles

I remember these encryption schemes from many, many years ago. I normally use web mail. I clicked on the we*****@cl*******.org on this page. My Outlook opened and placed we*****@cl*******.org in the To field – asterisks and all. Too bad there wasn’t a way to implement this via coding that didn’t require JavaScript enabled on the site visitor’s device. I am noticing more am more folks not enabling it.

Reply
1. December 14, 2022
  
  Denis Shagimuratov
  
  Hi Charles,
  
  Thanks for the great feedback! It was an issue with plugin settings on our blog. I’ve changed the settings and now the decoding is working as it should be.
  
  JavaScript is required because it’s part of the technology of encoding contact data. I hope if you test again, you will find that it goes perfect.
  
  Let me know if you have any questions.
  
  Reply
December 15, 2022

Annabelle Vergne

I tried, you say “WordPress Dashboard → Settings → Anti-Spam by Cleantalk → Advanced settings”, but when I go on the settings of my dashboard,, there is no “Anti-Spam by Cleantalk”, nor “Advanced settings”. Any clue?

Reply
1. December 15, 2022
  
  Anthony M
  
  Hi Annabelle,
  
  Could you please double-check the address of the dashboard: it should be https://www.frenchtranslationsplus.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=cleantalk
  
  Please let me know if the issue still remains.
  
  Reply
December 15, 2022

Catherine

Just wondering if this encodes an email address in a mailto link on an image for example?

Reply