Why write 'at' and 'dot' in email rather than '@' and '.'?
EmailWebpageEmail Problem Overview
I have seen some websites where people do not use @ and . in their email.
For example, they put name_at_webpage_dot_com rather than [email protected].
I am asking this question here because I tend to think that it is related to webpage designing. It may just be a style and nothing to do with html. I am totally unaware of this.
Email Solutions
Solution 1 - Email
Typically people do this to avoid having their email addresses found by spambots that search for a regex that matches email address formatting. By using _AT_ and _DOT_, the symbols that the spambot is looking for will not show up on the page, and therefore your email address will not be found.
It's generally good practice if you want to avoid an inbox full of spam. and you give out your email address on public pages. However, you can avoid the issue altogether by not posting your email address on a public forum. If you want to give it to someone, send it by a private message or email or something.
Solution 2 - Email
This is to obfuscate the Mailadresses from Mail-harvesters.
Solution 3 - Email
This is one of the many anti-harvesting techniques used against automated spambots. This one is used massively, so there are lot of spambots used to it and it does not work 100%. You can see some statistics and comparison of various anti-harvesting techniques in this great article
I personally prefer the css display:none technique combined with javascript. See the example:
<a href="mailto:[email protected]">myemail@<span style="display:none;">ignoreme-</span>example.com
And use javascript to remove it from href element. This way it works for users with javascript enabled, and users with disabled javascript at least see address correctly, but of course, clicking does not work correctly.
Solution 4 - Email
It is a simple form of spam protection against automated spambots that find e-mail addresses by matching those particular characters.
Solution 5 - Email
People generally write their email address like that on publicly accessible sites in hopes that web spiders run by spammers will not detect it as an email address, and therefore will not send them spam.
However, any halfway decent web spider should be able to decode 'example at webpage dot com' as an email address, so its mostly a vain effort and is best to just not post your email if spam is a concern.