Fighting of the Spambots
For sure, most of us have had our share of unsolicited mail from unknown origins. They are normally known as spam originating from a program called spambots.
Spambots are able to operate because email addresses have a familiar presentation. They simply read pages on the web and search the code looking for addresses around an “@” symbol. There are also snippets of HTML code that bots can find such as “mailto”. It doesn’t matter whether these are found on webpages, chatrooms or on discussion forums; the spambot is able to use it.
There are a number of ways of trying to fool theses pieces of software. You could use an image with your email address or replace the “@” symbol with an (AT). Both of these mean that your link will no longer be clickable and open up the user’s email client.