PhoenixDzine

E-mail harvesting is the process of obtaining lists of e-mail addresses using various methods for use in bulk e-mail or spam.

A common method is the use of software known as "harvesting bots" or "harvesters", which spider your Web pages other online sources to scrape e-mail addresses from public data. This evil spammers use spammer bots  to crawl websites (randomly or using a specific keywords) and create a list for their master plans. *bwahahaha*

If your email address is in plain text on your webpage, chances are that this evil spammers have you listed. So how do you increase the chances of not getting on this spammers victim list. 

Address munging 

Address munging—e.g., changing "ted@example.co.za" to "ted at example dot co.za"—is a simple technique ,though relatively easy to overcome. This Google search will show you how how easy it is to still get a list. It inconvenient to the websites users, who must examine the address in order to use it. Bad UX. 

Images 

Using images to display part or all of an email address is a very effective harvesting countermeasure. The processing required to automatically extract text from images is not economically viable for spammers. It is very inconvenient for users, who must manually launch their email client and transcribe the address.

Contact forms 

I prefer Email contact forms which send an email to the correct deparrtment without flooding them with spam. They do not reveal the recipient's address and avoid publishing an email address in the first place. This method limits message content to plain text. Insecure forms, however, may actually aid spammers by allowing anyone on theInternet to send e-mailthrough it (serving as an open mail relay). 

JavaScript obfuscation 

Email obfuscation produces a normal, clickable email link for users while obscuring the address from spiders. In terms of UX the solution is the best if you cannot use a contact form. The mail address is scrambled or encoded (obfuscated) in the source code seen by the harvesters.

These techniques are not foolproof solutions. A spambot intelligent enough could bypass these methods, but it is MUCH SAFER than just writing the address