Template talk:emaildated

This template is provides domain-based email address obfuscation to reduce spam; see fighting email spam for a general discussion.

It is called like this: {{emaildated|address|domain|ext}} (example output: address20241117@domain.ext)

The output looks like the original email address, but it actually hides the original in several ways:

• The current date is appended to the username (becoming "address20241117@domain.ext"); this technique is discussed in fighting email spam. The date does not display in the browser because of a stylesheet instruction.
• The "@" and "." are given as HTML entities rather than straight characters; this requires that any spambot wanting to harvest your address must be smart enough to understand these codes and to include them in its search for things that look like email addresses.
• The "@" and "." are also each surrounded by HTML tags, requiring that the spambot first strip off those codes from a page before attempting to search for addresses

This template is reasonably user-friendly – addresses copy-and-paste usably without editing, although pasted addresses appear different than the displayed address – but some email server configuration is required in order to use it, i.e. you need at least to be able to set up a catch-all account and to be able to discard email sent to particular addresses (when/if spambots get hold of them).