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Free Plugin by Andi Dittrich v7.2.0

Cryptex

Cryptex transforms plain-text E-Mail-Addresses into Images - automatically - No scrapers. No harvesters. No spambots. That's our goal!

Cryptex

The facts

Rating
4★ from 4
Active installs
900+
Price
Free
Last updated
12 Apr 2026
Added
Apr 2011
Requires WP
6.4
Tested up to
WP 6.9.7
Requires PHP
7.4
Downloads
21,267

Our analysis

AI-assisted

Cryptex is a WordPress plugin designed to protect email addresses and other sensitive information from being harvested by bots. It converts email addresses into images, making it harder for crawlers to collect this data. The plugin requires some configuration and is aimed at advanced users and professionals.

You can use shortcodes to wrap email addresses or enable an autodetect feature that automatically transforms all email addresses on your site. The plugin also offers various obfuscation modes and customization options to match your site's design.

Best for: This plugin is suitable for advanced WordPress users looking to secure sensitive information on their site.

What it does well

  • Protects email addresses, telephone numbers, and other content
  • Customizable appearance with various font options
  • Supports automatic detection and transformation of email addresses
  • Multiple security modes for obfuscation
  • Suitable for high traffic sites with automated caching

Where it falls short

  • Requires configuration and is not ready to use out-of-the-box
  • Targeted at advanced users and professionals

Verdict

Cryptex provides a robust solution for protecting email addresses and other sensitive data, but it may not be user-friendly for those without technical expertise.

From the developer

Andi Dittrich's own description of Cryptex, lightly tidied.

NOTE: this plugin is targeted to advanced users and professionals – it requires some configuration tasks and won’t work out-of-the-box!

The plugin is used to display Email addresses as an image – automatically.
This will stop harvesters and crawlers from gathering sensitive data from your website.
It works with emails, telephone numbers, postal addresses or any other text-content.
Just wrap your E-Mail-Address into a shortcode like [email]youraddress@example.com[/email] – that’s it.
Or use the Autodetect filter to transform every E-Mail-Address on your page automatically into an image!

Plugin Features

  • Protects Email Adresses, Telephone Numbers or any other content
  • Fully customizable appearance: you can configure font-family, font-size and font-color – everything looks like your theme style
  • Retina/HD/High-Dpi Images – best appearance on all devices (2x, 3x or 4x resolution enhancement)
  • Shortcode and/or Autodetection usage!
  • Build-In E-Mail-Address-Autodetection – all addresses on your page are protected automatically (if you want it – you can also just use shortcodes!)
  • Autodetection filters configurable for the_content, the_excerpt, comments, comments_excerpt, text-widget
  • Reversible Address-Autodetection Process – your content is modified as long as the plugin is activated
  • Postal-addresses, telephone-numbers, names and other sensitive information`s can be protected too
  • Protects E-Mail hyperlinks (mailto) by using javascript based key-shifting encryption/decryption with dynamic keys – but you can use images only
  • Suitable for high traffic sites – automated caching of dynamic generated images and CSS
  • Automatic font-search (standard system font-paths)
  • Supports the new modern UI style of WordPress 3.8
  • Native support for Enlighter Syntax Highlighter to display E-Mail Addresses within highlighted content (requires Enlighter v2.7)
  • Includes the Liberation(tm) Fonts package
  • TrueType as well as OpenType Fonts are supported

Text-Transformations

The @-sign as well as dot’s within the e-mail-addresses can be automatically replaced by different placeholders, e.g. mail(at)example{dot}org, to match your website’s corporate design.

Security Modes

Cryptex provides various obfuscation modes for E-Mail-Addresses:

  • Plain Text – only text-transformations are applied – no use of images
  • Single Image – the e-mail-address is expressed as a single image
  • Multipart Image – the e-mail-address is splitted into two images, seperated by the @-sign in plain text
  • Advanced Multipart Image – the craziest one: each part (divided by dot’s and @ sign) is displayed as a seperate image, the dividers as plain text

Read the full description on the official page →

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