Keep Iphone browser from turning numbers into links

Question

I'm writing a very simple page that is supposed to be viewed on mobile devices. While viewing it in the iphone simulator I noticed that the iphone browser automatically turns any number string into a link, supposedly for dialing it directly.

Problem is - there are a ton of numbers on my page that LOOK like phone numbers but actually aren't. Is there a way to tell the iphone browser to leave these numbers alone?

Answer 1

Very poor implementation on Apple's part (I hear this also happens on the iPad, where it makes no sense whatsoever), but there is a fix:

<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no" />

Source: http://www.darowski.com/tracesofinspiration/2009/03/31/stop-iphone-from-incorrectly-auto-linking-phone-numbers/

One of the comments on that page also suggests the use of the controversial soft hyphen (­) to prevent auto-linking of a specific number (so the browser can still auto-linl other numbers on the page).