Allow mailto: links in the Links module

[swaldman]

Title:
Allow mailto: links in the Links module

Area:
Journal modules

Summary:
It is not possible to add a mailto: link to the "Links" module. I would like to be able to do so.

Description:
At present, if I fill in "mailto:my@email.com" as a link target for the Links module, it gets rewritten to "http://my@email.com", which is obviously something entirely different.

I don't know whether there is a reason for not allowing email links, and thus whether it is intentional that it can't be done, or whether this is an unintended side-effect of tidying up URIs. If it's not a deliberate choice, I think that email links should be allowed.

Poll #11748 Allow mailto: links in the Links module

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 53

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
25 (47.2%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (1.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
5 (9.4%)

(I have no opinion)
22 (41.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[msilverstar]

mailto addresses are often used by spammers, they can overwhelm a mailbox

[matgb]

Spammers still crawl the web looking for them, but also crawl for anything looking like an email address. It would be useful to put my email address in the sidebar in some circumstances, I know my mailbox won't be overwhelmed by spam ergo it's my choice to do it.

any displayed or written out email address can be spam harvested, mailto ust makes it a bit easier, but that something is abused sometimes doesn't mean its purpose is irrelevent, it's still part of the html spec.

[torachan]

But we're not talking about forcing everyone to put their email in the sidebar. We're talking about allowing it to be an option for those who want to.

[marahmarie]

And there are ways to do it that won't allow spam harvesting to commence, like this: http://www.albionresearch.com/misc/obfuscator.php or the same idea but using ASCII code (described on this page: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/03/hide-your-email-address-on-websites.html) or even using an image-based likeness of your email address.

[swaldman]

Do they actually work? It strikes me that if a user's browser can decode the link (which it has to be able to do for the link to be useful), then an address-harvesting crawler can do the same.

The image-based likeness would rather miss the point. I can already type my address on the page if I want to - this suggestion is about having a *link* that works.
In fact I already do have my email address, and a mailto: link, on my journal, but I had to do it through the Custom Text module.

[marahmarie]

Do they actually work?

I don't know; never tried them. When I did have websites of my own I went with image-based versions or more typically just let my email address (marahmarie@rocketmail.com: go ahead, folks, spam it) get totally spammed. It's pretty much my one address dedicated to collecting letters and spam from the whole entire universe, and I've accepted it as that.

And just throwing the image-based address out there as an idea/option because for now it is the only foolproof, spamproof answer anyone really knows of (until spammers figure out how to translate text from images, which will happen soon enough, I'm sure - Google is already on that with some degree of success, from what I gather).

[marahmarie]

Excellent idea. :)

[melannen]

If we're going to allow that, I would also like to be able to include irc:// and ftp:// links in the links list too, please! :D