Breaking: #90044 - config.spamProtectEmailAddresses with option "ascii" removed

See forge#90044

Description

The TypoScript setting config.spamProtectEmailAddresses set to ascii has no effect anymore as the ASCII-encryption feature has been removed.

The option changed any links to emails like href="mailto:benni@example.com" to point to the ASCII-encoded equivalent. Since all browsers (and most bots/crawlers) do this automatically and instantly this feature has no spam-protection relevance anymore.

Impact

Setting the option to ascii has no effect anymore, which is the same as not setting the option at all. However, in case the option is set to ascii a PHP E_USER_DEPRECATED error is raised.

Affected Installations

TYPO3 installations having this option set in their TypoScript setup.

Migration

In case you still want to keep a email SPAM protection around, it is recommended to set the option config.spamProtectEmailAddresses to a numeric value between -10 and 10.

Alternatively, there is an extension called emailobfuscator available in the TYPO3 Extension Repository, which also aims to achieve a similar behaviour.