Craigslist has box with the words "show contact info" in their ads......

Craigslist has box with the words "show contact info" in the text of classified ads, and when you click it the box disappers and the phone number of the person who placed the ad is there.
I'd like to know what the benefit of them doing that is. Does it help bots from grabbing phone numbers? The reason I ask is I'd like to put a phone number on a web page of mine, and wonder if I need this page/code feature.
I look forward to being enlightened

 

It will help to fight off regular bots. However, a bot customized to cg won't have a hard time getting tweaked for this new feature.

 

Use an image with the phone # on it instead. That will ensure no bot will be able to read it.

 

And, besides using the Chrome-extension Project Naptha, no-one can copy the text directly. Why are people insisting on using stupid, idiotic, non-semantic, non-accessible crap like that? You know that this will, for instance, not be available for users using a screen-reader? Blind people?
If you want to protect the content from scrapers, for instance, demand that users create a user (and provide som sort of verification) before they can see contact info. Or just notify users of the service that if they put up contact information, like phone numbers or email, that you cannot guarantee that they won't be picked up by data-miners, and that you're not accountable for anything.

 

I don't know if I would use this kind of service. But let's look at the pros and cons:

Pros:

• You don't get calls by bots. But in my experience bots don't usually call anyway. People who want to prank call you will be able to read your image anyway. By the way, even pranksters might be potential customers, it comes down to your salesmanship.
• If your site is not very well known potential bots won't be able to read the phone number and your number won't land on random other sites that do not have anything to do with you.
• Even "the good bots" like Google or Bing can't read your number. So if that information is semi-public that's a good tool to be somewhat hidden.

Cons:

• People with screen-readers can't read your phone number.
• If your customers aren't very tech-savvy they might not even get how to display the number.
• Browsers without JavaScript won't be able to access your number. (I know JavaScript is very much used everywhere.)
• If your somebody is after your site, a bot can be programmed to handle your image-hidden picture. There are free text-recognition tools that work very well. As long as your writing can be read by most humans most bots can handle it, too.

I suggest you get yourself a separate phone number for your business and place the thing on the site. Maybe make it not-copyable. (For example by overlapping it with another div or using JavaScript to disable right clicks and ctrl+copy. But obviously someone who wants to copy your phone number will be able to.)

 

Please, please, PLEASE stop trying to break common UI - like adding images for things that are supposed to be text, and trying to circumvent right-clicking and such - it's so easy to get around, and just annoying for people to experience. And then they end up asking people like me, who knows how to get around things like this, to fix it for them. Just... don't.

 

There's an easy way of converting it into an image. Like these guys do on their site:

https://www.cellbazaar.com/en/dhanm...e_3GS_16GB_Black_Factory_Unlocked_8700582.htm

I think it's still better than what CL is doing. At least I think it is.