This mechanism is a method employed to obfuscate email addresses displayed on websites, primarily to prevent them from being harvested by bots. It functions by encoding the email address in HTML, requiring a specific script to decode and display it correctly to human visitors. For example, an email address like “user@example.com” would be rendered as unintelligible code in the raw HTML source, but visible as a clickable link to website users.
The significance of this technology lies in its role in mitigating spam and unwanted solicitations. By hindering bots from easily extracting email addresses, it reduces the likelihood of those addresses being added to spam lists. Its implementation reflects an ongoing effort to balance user accessibility with security measures against automated abuse on the internet. The system was developed as a response to the increasing prevalence of automated email harvesting.
