Who would have thought? Once doing their thing and minding their own business – a staple in an online presence, the humble contact form now must fight for its rights to be left alone.
Website contact forms have found themselves of late in the firing line for increased spam and the very real potential for the dreaded phishing schemes.
The very least these unwanted guests will do is give you a tension headache, but all will rob you of your time.
There are much better ways to spend your business hours and resources.
What is Form Spam and Why We Hate it
Simply put, this form of invasion is when unwanted messages are sent through via legitimate forms on your site.
Why are they so vulnerable?
The forms on our sites aren’t quite at the same level as the normal way in which spam is dealt with. Email filters and other security measures have led to email spam being lessened thanks to the ongoing focus and tech put into eradicating it. Spam through forms, however, isn’t quite there yet.
So, the next logical question is, what can we do about it?
It’s time to fight.
1. Use CAPTCHA
Why are CAPTCHAs good for reducing form spam? In its simplest terms, the main goal is to be able to detect a human being apart from something more malicious like a robot made of scripts or algorithms.
How?
With risk analysis techniques, and in more recognizable cases the use of image challenges, and even audio questions.
Most of us have encountered CAPTCHA by now and it appears to be a popular form of human detection.
2. Welcome to the Honeypot
More and more people are liking Honeypot to enable the blocking of spam bots and other unwanted form raiders.
Provided by many security-conscious form builders, this technique involves a hidden field in the form that only bots can see. If the field has any text added to it, the Honeypot will recognize the imposter and will not proceed with submitting the form.
Want More?
Along with these most popular ways of ridding you of the form spam burden, consider the following.
3. Try Using a Keyword Block list
WordPress comes complete with the tools to create a simple keyword blocklist. You could find this invaluable. Look for it in Discussion Settings.
4. Don’t Use a Contact Form
Many have found this simple answer the best for them. Contact forms can create issues, and until there is one way to rid all unwanted from our lives, some business owners have decided they will no longer have a contact form. Seem a bit drastic? It works for some.
5. Use Something Else
Put your contact form on a page not called “contact.” Be creative and think outside of the box. Call the page ‘Knock, Knock’…or maybe ‘When You’re Ready.’ That’ll elude bots that look for forms on specific pages.
6. Do You Have a Maintenance Plan?
Spammers are getting smarter, so it’s best we keep informed on the ways to prevent attacks on our businesses.
The aim here is to protect a business from the relentlessness of unwanted emails and the inevitable headaches, and what better way than letting the professionals do it for you?
By now, you already know the benefit of a full-service Web host that helps you from beginning to end.
Why not add to the list of things HostHuski can assist with?
People have differing opinions about how to stop form spam, but generally, these tips are worth giving some thought to.
Get back to doing what you do best instead of dealing with these plague meisters.
Ready to learn more? Let us handle form spam troubles for you with a maintenance plan to suit your business. Contact us today.