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Discussion on: Protect Your Contact Information From Crawlers

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dirtycode1337 profile image
Dirty-Co.de

I know that this is possible, but luckily by now there aren't many crawlers now here which crawl emails using JavaScript - I guess. Maybe that "business" is not so interesting any more? That solution is simple and easy to implement, but doesn't keep all bots outside.

And if I ever can avoid captchas, I will. Example: dirty-co.de/user-experience/wenn-d... - I wanted to get information about my package which should be delivered by DHL but their captcha didn't load properly so I was stuck there ... bad UX!

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kor3k profile image
kor3k

lol, i had the exact same captcha-not-shown problem with huawei website some time ago.

but google's recaptcha is pretty neat lately. you don't even have to copy/write anything if recaptcha evaluates you as "human" (which it does in most cases).

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dirtycode1337 profile image
Dirty-Co.de

Ah well, I didn't read exactly enough ;). So if you're respecting the GDPR (as we are forced to in Germany here) you may come to a new issue trying to use Google Recaptcha ... :S

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bahe007 profile image
Bastian Heinlein

This! But it's not only the regulations like GDPR, I personally wouldn't like to give Google more information about the people using my websites and even more important about the website's usage.

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kor3k profile image
kor3k

oh, i didn't think about that in GDPR context, why there is a problem with recaptcha? (i'm more into tech than law stuff, so i don't know).

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bahe007 profile image
Bastian Heinlein

This is my imperfect understanding: While it is still possible to use Google Recaptcha, it causes a lot of privacy headaches, because Google processes personal data and places cookies. The latter means that you'll need at least some kind of cookie banner and make sure, cookies are only placed after this was explicitly allowed. But more importantly is the former: Google not only processes personal data, but it does this possibly in the US or somewhere else. This means - as I understand - that you'll need some kind of contract with them to protect your and your user's interests. That is usually a standard contract, however it is a legal binding contract.

And in some related cases of which I'm aware, courts ruled that you could theoretically be partially responsible if your contract partner disobeys privacy regulations.

While this is my best knowledge, there are of course no guarantees that my probably out-of-date-for-several-months knowledge isn't necessarily anymore correct.