There was, during the construction of this new website, some animated conversation among some members about the issues and concerns relating to having an email address published online on a website.

The biggest concerns of course are Phishing, Spam and Junk mail. And the fears are justified and real.

There are things we can do to lessen the risks.

I am assuming that because of your role it is important that you are contactable - so some way needs to be found for your email to be accessed.

The simplest and least effective way of hiding an actual address is to simply throw a cloak over it.   Lets say my address is  trevor@aplaceonline.com  its very easy for  put in a link like this   click here to message Trevor which hides the real address from the “casual” reader, but if you hover your mouse over it, (depending on your system) somewhere on your page the real address will be visible. As shown here:-

So that doesn’t completely fix the issue does it!.

An alternative is to use “Email Forwarding”  this is where a virtual email address is used on a website (or other place)  This virtual address might be WebManager@Sloughu3a.com for example, this gives no indication of the ultimate destination of the mail (hover you mouse over it and see!), what it does is to take any message sent to it, and in the background, forwards it to a named account, in this case its my personal email address, but it could be anyone. The recipient is not made aware of anything unusual about the message – its seamless.

But we can do better!

On Sloughu3a.com we have chosen to use an even better option.  We use a combination of email forwarding and a special type of link that further disguises the real email address, and sends the details to an “email form”. Using this more complex process, (which has been developed between WordPress and u3a Siteworks,) your address is hidden very much more securely for your protection.

And that's all there is to it!

None of these processes replace your own email, they simply hide the address from anyone looking to abuse it. I hope this makes, what can be a complicated issue, a little clearer.

Submitted by: Trevor Rudge.

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