Tips to Help You Stop Form Spam
Now that many of us have found ways to reduce the spam in our email inboxes, many spammers have taken to spamming our website contact forms.
At first I wondered why someone would bother to spam me through my web forms. Why bother sending the junk to just me? But then I realized, it’s not just the forms on my sites. It’s a spambot that’s automatically surfing sites and filling out every form it encounters.
Here are some tools and techniques to help combat form spam:
- If you use a common form processing script the spambots are searching for the “out of the box” file name. Try changing it.
- Use obscure names for your forms and form fields. The spam bots look for field names that are common to website forms like, “contact form,” “name,” “email address.” Using unusual terms might help reduce the number of automatic submissions.
- Use a CAPTCHA, a randomly generated image containing letters and numbers that must be entered for the form to be submitted.
- Get MasterFormV4 which comes with built in protections against form hijacking and form spam.
With a little patience and trial and error you can find a solution… at least for now. The spammers sure are persistent…..
By the way….. I’m assuming you have carefully selected your form handling script to help prevent form hijacking. Using an insecure form subjects you to the possibility have having your form used to send spam email to thousands of people….. a problem far worse than having spam sent to just you.