Q and A: Should we use mailto: on our web site?

Dear Kalena...

We use the mailto: direct on many pages of our website. This is just one method by which people can contact us (including an online enquiry form which can be submitted etc).

However, when logging on in internet cafes (and anywhere that personal email is not set-up on the computer) users get an error message. We have had such users contact us to tell them there is a problem with our website, not understanding that the problem is with the computer set-up.

Is there anyway you can change the error message to make it more user-friendly? Alternatively, do you think it’s possible to divert mailto to our online enquiry form in this instance?

What would you recommend?

Thanks!
Lucy

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Lucy

I know it's commonly used, but in these days of excessive spam and virus circulation, MailTo: is not a good protocol to use on a website. It's too easy for spambots and hackers to scour your site and pick up your email address in their travels.

One way to trick spambots is to use a free email protection program like Natata Anti-Spam Encoder which locates email addresses on web pages and encodes them into a format that cannot be understand by spiders or robots but can still be readable by the web browser and people. Unfortunately, this does not stop humans from taking note of your email address and manually adding you to junk mail lists. Plus it doesn't solve your roaming user problems.

Instead, I would recommend changing all your mailto: links to point to your online enquiry form. It should just be a matter of using your code editing "find and replace" tool. You should also make sure that the email address your enquiry form submits to is hidden in the code (I can see from your site that it currently is not hidden). You can use Natata for this purpose.

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