The battleground against website contact form spam is ever-evolving. While email spam filters have become increasingly adept at thwarting unwanted messages, a new front has emerged: website contact forms. Businesses and individuals alike rely on these forms to facilitate communication with customers, clients, and visitors. However, these forms have also become prime targets for spam bots, flooding inboxes with irrelevant and often malicious content.
Contact form spam not only clogs up inboxes but also diminishes the user experience and can even pose security risks. Fortunately, there are several strategies that website owners can employ to combat this invasive nuisance and keep their virtual doors open for genuine communication.
Regularly Monitor and Update Security Measures
The battle against spam is ongoing, and spammers are constantly devising new tactics to circumvent defenses. Regularly monitoring your website’s contact forms for unusual activity and updating your security measures accordingly is crucial in staying ahead of the curve.
Implement CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA
CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) has long been a staple in the fight against automated bots. By requiring users to complete a challenge, such as identifying distorted letters or selecting specific images, CAPTCHA helps verify that the submission is from a real person rather than a bot.
Google’s reCAPTCHA takes this a step further by using advanced risk analysis techniques to distinguish between human and automated input. It offers a seamless user experience while effectively filtering out spam.
The Google reCAPTCHA v3 spam protection works to block bot spam, but cannot block human spammers.
Unfortunately, spam is a growing part of internet (or phone) usage. But the upside of receiving human spam is that as long as it is not making your email account unusable, it lets you know on a regular basis that your contact form is working and saves you wondering or testing. You would just need to regularly delete these emails (it’s very important for your website mail deliverability that you DO NOT mark them as spam/junk).
If your email inbox is still unusable due to human spam coming from your website contact forms, there is an additional (paid) integration that could be implemented, called “Akismet”. This aims to target human spammers by cross-checking against global spam databases. While we can’t guarantee its effectiveness for contact form spam, but we have had some success using it on comment spam.
What can you do?
While no solution is entirely fool-proof, combining these strategies can create a formidable defense against automated spam bots, allowing you to focus on meaningful interactions with genuine visitors and customers. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, so too must our defenses against spam, ensuring that the virtual realm remains a safe and welcoming space for all.
Speak to our team today to discuss your current spam protection process, and how we can help you strengthen your security.