Protecting fax numbers from fax harvesters

For those who don't already know about this, do a Google search for "fax
harvester" and you'll see that fax numbers can be harvested online just as
email addresses can. They can even be sorted by area code and keywords.

I'm thinking of putting a fax-to-email number in addition to an email
contact form at a site. I don't expect to receive a lot of legit faxes, but
I'd like to provide the option if it doesn't result in me getting spam from
it. Are there ways to block fax numbers from fax harvesters? I could make
the fax number into an image, but if I don't put the fax number in the alt
text, visually-impaired users won't be able to access it.

Does anyone know how fax harvesters work? Do they just read page content, or
do they read image alt text too? Would it work to separate the area code
from the rest of the number, something like this:

Fax: 123-4567 (Seattle, area code 890)
Fax: 765-4321 (Vancouver, area code 012)

Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Lois

Lois wrote:
 > For those who don't already know about this, do a Google search for
 > "fax harvester" and you'll see that fax numbers can be harvested
 > online just as email addresses can. They can even be sorted by area
 > code and keywords.
 >
 > I'm thinking of putting a fax-to-email number in addition to an email
 > contact form at a site. I don't expect to receive a lot of legit
 > faxes, but I'd like to provide the option if it doesn't result in me
 > getting spam from it. Are there ways to block fax numbers from fax
 > harvesters?

Why not get a real fax number?

In the UK there is the fax preference service (fps) which is essentially a
list of fax numbers that have opted out of receiving all/any type of shotgun
style fax spam. It works well, my unwanted faxes dropped from 5-10 daily to
3-4 per year.

Perhaps there's something similar in your location?

--
William Tasso<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->