Hiding email address in a newsletter

Question

Hi...
We send out newsletters to our mailing list and have an
individual's email
id on that mail. (The email id on our mail is not constant
and changes
according to the subject.) No problem there as there's not
much chance of
spam being generated from this route. The problem, however,
lies with the
newsletter available from the website. (The usual : "If this
mail does not
display properly, please click here".)
Hence, for someone accessing the mailer via the website, the
contact email
is open to spam. We do have php forms on the website and
email addresses on
the forms are protected via the php. However, in this case we
don't want to
use forms but have the receipient:
1/ Able to reply either through his email client or
2/Through his web based email
Sure, i guess that we could have a form open each time
someone clicked the
email link but the hassle with that would be the need to
create a special
form for each mailer and we'd soon have a plethora of
forms!!!
Any suggestions?
Cheers and TIA,
JJ

Answer 1

On 11 Mar 2009 in macromedia.dreamweaver, Jay Jay wrote:
> "Joe Makowiec"
>> On 11 Mar 2009 in macromedia.dreamweaver, Jay Jay
wrote:
>>
>
>> Why would you need one page per recipient? One of
two things:
>> - You say you have a code for each newsletter
recipient; just
>> include that in a hidden field in the form using URL
parameters.
>> It would work like this: when you generate the link
to the contact
>> form, you'd do it something like:
>> <a href="contactform.php?user=<?php echo
$_GET['emailid'];
>> ?>">Contact us</a> where emailid comes
from the link to the 'view
>> this page online' link you've included in the email.
>> - Let the recipient include his/her own contact
information.
>
> Joe...
>
> Not sure what you mean... but this is present
scenario...
>
> Newsletter/s has/have the following at the end:
>
> 1/ Postal address
> 2/ Phone & Fax
> 3/ Email address
> 4/ Website
>
> In the newsletters, the only common factor is the
website. Often the
> postal addresses vary and so do the phones and email ids
depending
> on the cities and the respective people (contacts).
Currently, in
> the newsletter we have the subject coded in, so all the
responder
> has to do is click on the email link and his/her email
client opens
> with subject and addressee already in place and all they
really have
> to do is hit the send button. Using forms would mean:
>
> 1/ The creation of a special form for each newsletter -
otherwise we
> wouldn't know what the responder was referring to.
> 2/ Additionally, an extra effort from the responder to
at least
> enter his/her email id.
>
> What i was kind of hoping was we could have the various
email ids
> concealed in a formmail (adding new ones - if neccessary
- is not a
> big deal), and clicking the link opens the responders
email client
> where his address and the subject are already entered.
Like you get
> with the (mailto:[email protected]?subject=Seminar on ZZZZ
You've been around this forum long enough to know that mailto
links
are, at best, a crapshoot. They won't work for most people
who use
webmail clients (Hotmail, Yahoo!mail, gmail...); also,
standalone email
clients may or may not be able to recognize, say, entered
subjects.
From your description, I gather that you are generating the
emails from
some kind of database which contains, at a bare minimum, the
recipients' names and email addresses. So when you create the
email,
you also include the code which allows you to key back into
that
database to retrieve the user's name and email. The link to
the
contact form would thus be:
<a href="contactform.php?userid=xxyyzz12345">Contact
Us</a>
And the contact form uses $_GET['userid'] to query the
database and
retrieve the user's information. Likewise, you could add
mailing
information
<a
href="contactform.php?userid=xxyyzz12345&mailing=664">Contact
Us</a>
and using $_GET['mailing'], go to a database of mailings to
set the
subject. All this is transparent to the user.
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.net/
Email:
http://makowiec.net/contact.php