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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 :oops:

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