There are a variety of ways to protect and hide emails and other information from email harvesters or just to protect your privacy through obfuscation, a technique on the web that allows displaying of email and content within web browsers so browsers can understand them, but masks them from web crawlers and bots.

A typical email link would be:

<a href="mailto:fredsmith@gmail.com" title="Email Fred">email</a>

An obfuscated email address link would look like this:

<a href="mailto:&amp;#102;&amp;#114;&amp;#101;&amp;#100;&amp;#115;&amp;#109;&amp;#105;&amp;#116;&amp;#104;&amp;#064;&amp;#103;&amp;#109;&amp;#097;&amp;#105;&amp;#108;&amp;#046;&amp;#099;&amp;#111;&amp;#109;" title="Email Fred">email</a>

Free Online Tools to Obfuscate Email Addresses

Instead of doing this manually using HTML Character Entities, there are a variety of free online tools to obfuscate email addresses. The output can be set to be in HTML characters or use JavaScript or other code methods. NOTE: WordPress.com blogs are restricted to only HTML Character Entities.

• Online Email Obfuscator
• Email Harvester Robots, Spam and Email Obfuscation
• Obfuscate email tool – Online tool

There are a variety of WordPress Plugins that will handle the job for you automatically, too. Check the WordPress Plugin Directory for the latest versions and options.

For more information on obfuscation, see:

• A List Apart: Articles: Graceful E-Mail Obfuscation
• Protection From Harvesters on the WordPress Codex
• Website Hammered by Hotlinking, Spammers, and Free Loaders? « Lorelle on WordPress