ob·fus·cate: To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand.

Anyone that has ever posted their email address on a web page will be aware that it is a surefire way to increase their daily spam quota. The reason is that spammers have tools that crawl around the web, similar to search engines, except that these tools, or "spambots", only search for email addresses. When they find one, it is added to a spam list that is then used to offer unsuspecting recipients share tips, discounted Viagra or $27m from a Nigerian benefactor.

Personally, I usually use a PHP-based contact form if I want people to contact me. However, there are times when you just want to put a simple email link on a site. In this instance the best course of action is to obfuscate the email address in some way so that it doesn't get caught by the spambots. There are two common methods of achieving this:

1. Build the email address using JavaScript:

e.g.

The problem with this solution is that some people use older browsers that don't support JavaScript, or deliberately turn off JavaScript support for security reasons. For that reason, a better solution may be...

2. Plain-text obfuscation

e.g.

In this instance, the human-readable characters that make up the email address are converted into their ASCII ordinal equivalents. Although the source code does not reveal an obvious email address, it appears fine in the user's browser.

You can use the tool below to obfuscate your email address using technique 2 above - the plain-text obfuscation method. Enter your email address then click the "Obfuscate" button. Simply copy and paste the obfuscated address into your web page.

Please note that I do not store your email address in any way, shape or form. This obfuscator is entirely safe to use and, as soon as you navigate away from the results page, your email address will disappear into the ether. Also bear in mind that this technique is not 100% foolproof; some spambots could be (and probably have been) written to decipher this technique. However, it will certainly go some way towards safeguarding your email address.