 | Several Ways to Stop or Slow Down Online Form Spam |
Spam, a four letter word, was typically thought of before the existence of email and the internet as a can of precooked meat and was found near the frozen food section of the supermarket. Once the internet came into existence it is known for the use of electronic messaging software to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. It can be in the form of unwanted email, web spam, search engine spam, instant message spam, blogs, classified ads and even electronic faxes that get sent from email to fax machine. It is pretty inexpensive to have a spamming operation going due to software that is used.
One type of spam that is typically used is form spam. Form spam is an automatic way of going to an individuals or company website and filling out there online form and submitting it using software instead of a real human. The end result is data coming to your email that is typically not sent from a real person. This can be both annoying and discouraging especially if you are trying to gain clients from your website. Many times when you go to read the email all you see is gibberish. This doesn't help anybody including the person sending unsolicited form spam.
One type of spam that is typically used is form spam. Form spam is an automatic way of going to an individuals or company website and filling out there online form and submitting it using software instead of a real human. The end result is data coming to your email that is typically not sent from a real person. This can be both annoying and discouraging especially if you are trying to gain clients from your website. Many times when you go to read the email all you see is gibberish. This doesn't help anybody including the person sending unsolicited form spam.
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Now I am not against advertising. If someone is going to advertise something then sell something interesting, not gibberish.
If you would like to do this and are having trouble, please contact us. We will be able to easily implement this on your form so the user has to enter the words in order to submit your form. Sometimes, I find this hard to read the letters because they are very close to each other. While this is an excellent deterrent it may not be fully necessary.
To help to slow this down from happening to your website, I have a 3 quick ideas that may help:
#1. One way is to make sure that they enter a proper email before submitting it. Once the form is submitted it will do a second check with the email to make sure everything went ok. This forces the person filling out the form to use a proper email. Also make sure the other required fields have to be filled out like name, business name, address, etc... If you require these fields, it will be less likely that it can get submitted any other way.
#2. Another way is to not allow the same form to be submitted 2 times consecutively without closing the window and re-opening it. This will slow down a spam program. This will require a little programming skill in order to accomplish this on the back end but it is well worth it. We can do this to help protect your form. contact us is you need this done.
#3. A third way which I feel is the most secure way of doing this is to use a simple validation code so where they must enter correctly several letters or digits. One of these is called a Captcha program. There is one on a website called https://www.captcha.net. We also have several techniques using a simpler version of a captcha program.
Form spam can be slowed down by using of these techniques or all of these techniques combined but for every defense, a spammer will create a new offense. However, I feel that doing nothing is not a good way to go. At least have something in place so that you are somewhat protected from this problem. It may not be 100% full proof but what in computers has ever been foolproof besides shutting the power off.
Regardless of how you decide to curb form spam and even if you spend a few dollars to do it, it definitely cuts down on the hassle of cleaning out your online form inbox or database of unwanted junk mail every day. Knowing that legitimate prospective customers are contacting you through your website can bring a happier online experience.
There are several other ways of stopping form spam that I did not mention in this article. If you would like some more information on getting this done to your website, please feel free to contact us and we can do this for you!
If you would like to do this and are having trouble, please contact us. We will be able to easily implement this on your form so the user has to enter the words in order to submit your form. Sometimes, I find this hard to read the letters because they are very close to each other. While this is an excellent deterrent it may not be fully necessary.
To help to slow this down from happening to your website, I have a 3 quick ideas that may help:
#1. One way is to make sure that they enter a proper email before submitting it. Once the form is submitted it will do a second check with the email to make sure everything went ok. This forces the person filling out the form to use a proper email. Also make sure the other required fields have to be filled out like name, business name, address, etc... If you require these fields, it will be less likely that it can get submitted any other way.
#2. Another way is to not allow the same form to be submitted 2 times consecutively without closing the window and re-opening it. This will slow down a spam program. This will require a little programming skill in order to accomplish this on the back end but it is well worth it. We can do this to help protect your form. contact us is you need this done.
#3. A third way which I feel is the most secure way of doing this is to use a simple validation code so where they must enter correctly several letters or digits. One of these is called a Captcha program. There is one on a website called https://www.captcha.net. We also have several techniques using a simpler version of a captcha program.
Form spam can be slowed down by using of these techniques or all of these techniques combined but for every defense, a spammer will create a new offense. However, I feel that doing nothing is not a good way to go. At least have something in place so that you are somewhat protected from this problem. It may not be 100% full proof but what in computers has ever been foolproof besides shutting the power off.
Regardless of how you decide to curb form spam and even if you spend a few dollars to do it, it definitely cuts down on the hassle of cleaning out your online form inbox or database of unwanted junk mail every day. Knowing that legitimate prospective customers are contacting you through your website can bring a happier online experience.
There are several other ways of stopping form spam that I did not mention in this article. If you would like some more information on getting this done to your website, please feel free to contact us and we can do this for you!