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Phone Number Harvesting Protection
Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:27 pm
by styks1987
I have some phone numbers that keep getting automated phone calls from being extracted from a web page. Is there a way I can print a number to a page while still maintaining the ability to select it but keep those sticky fingered robots off?
Thanks,
Phoned OUT!
Re: Phone Number Harvesting Protection
Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:46 pm
by shawngoldw
look up robots.txt
That should help
Re: Phone Number Harvesting Protection
Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:04 pm
by styks1987
Thank you for your help but unfortunately the robots I am dealing with will not obey the rules set by robots.txt
"In theory yes, in practice, no. If the bad robot obeys /robots.txt, and you know the name it scans for in the User-Agent field. then you can create a section in your /robotst.txt to exclude it specifically. But almost all bad robots ignore /robots.txt, making that pointless."
Any more ideas?
thanks
Re: Phone Number Harvesting Protection
Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:38 pm
by shawngoldw
very true, I hadn't completely thought through your problem
what if you do some sort of weird formatting? Like put the phone number in 3 seperate divs?
Code: Select all
<div>(123)</div><div>456</div> <div>7890</div>
then style them to be inline with 0 padding and whatnot so it still looks normal. Maybe there's something simpler, but that could help?
Re: Phone Number Harvesting Protection
Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:50 pm
by John Cartwright
When displaying sensitive information such as emails or phone #s, where scrapping is potentially an issue, I have always generated an image with GD. Whilst not bullet proof (lookup captchas), it will surely stop 99.99% of the bots out there.
Re: Phone Number Harvesting Protection
Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 8:51 am
by styks1987
Hey thank you both for your help. If I generate an image, will the number still be able to be selected? I guess this might be asking too much. I will try the image.
Thanks!
Re: Phone Number Harvesting Protection
Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 10:41 am
by Benjamin
Bots are stupid. Just use javascript to display the number, or muck it up like this:
Code: Select all
88<b style="display: none;">092390</b>8-555-12<b style="display: none;">092390</b>12