A visible email address is convenient for a genuine customer — and just as easy for a bot to scrape. Here's how exposure actually happens, what it costs in day-to-day spam and risk, and how to find out where it's happening on your own site.
None of these are careless mistakes — they're normal, well-meaning choices that add up to an address being far more public than intended.
A plain-text email address on an "About" or "Contact" page, written out for convenience.
A former employee's personal work address, still listed long after they've left.
A clickable email link is convenient for visitors, but just as easy for a scraper to read.
A test or "example@" address left in from when a page was built, still publicly visible.
More spam, more often. Harvested addresses end up on lists that get sold and resold — the exposure itself doesn't fade even if you never respond to any of it.
Genuine enquiries get harder to spot. The more junk an inbox receives, the easier it is to miss the message that actually mattered.
A quiet way in for phishing. A publicly listed address is one a scammer can spoof or target directly, dressed up to look like it's from someone inside your business.
This is one of the six areas covered in a full WebTality audit. Here's specifically what the exposure check looks at.
Reads your pages the way a visitor — or a scraper — would, and flags any address written out in plain text.
Flags obvious leftovers like "test@" or "example@" addresses that were never meant to stay live.
Shows exactly which pages carry visible addresses, so you know where to start.
A simple read on how exposed the site is overall, based on how addresses are presented across it.
A form does the same job for a genuine visitor without publishing the address itself.
An address like info@ or hello@ that several people can see is easier to keep an eye on than one person's named address sitting in public.
A page built around a person who's since left is easy to forget about — worth a periodic check.
No — the check reads text on the page, which is also how most scrapers work. An address deliberately shown as an image is a separate (and fairly old-fashioned) way to reduce exposure, but it isn't something this check evaluates.
No — it tells you where addresses are exposed so you can decide what to change. It doesn't filter spam or affect your inbox directly.
The free snapshot gives you a headline exposure count. The full report (£49) lists every address found and exactly which page it's on, up to 150 pages of your site.
Run the free snapshot — no card, no commitment, just a plain-English answer.
Check my website — free →This is one of six areas WebTality checks — see the full overview or what's in the paid report.