How To Deal With Form Spam – The Community Answers
Photo credit: Michal
Zacharzewski
I asked a few people in the community how they dealt with spam that comes from forms on their web sites. These could be contact forms, forms to ask questions, forms you ask people to complete to request something from you. In case you don’t already know, there are robots that seek out such forms, use it to deliver spam to you. If your form is not secured, it could also use your form to deliver spam to other people which is worse.
This time, I turned the question over to some of my friends so they can share how they handle this situation. Here’s what they said.
Melody from The HomeMaker Helpers says:
Since I installed my contact station on my sites I haven’t had any form spam. The script reduces Spam by preventing email harvesting and by using Captcha to block SpamBots from submitting the form. The basic version only costs $7.00 and it works with all sites including wp!
The premium version is still cheap, it includes a CONTACT Us form, FEEDBACK form, TELL-A-FRIEND referral form and a form so they can sign up for your MAILING LIST and can be used on multiple sites.
Heather Bixler from Girly Blog Designz says:
I use the Cforms plugin for WordPress and I have not had any form SPAM since using it. I even have some of them set up without the word verfication and I still don’t receive any form spam. 🙂
Tsoniki from Crafter Cast says:
At first I deleted any links that went to the page with the form on it – and when that didn’t work, I deleted the page off my server. That’s okay for now since I don’t need the page for a little bit longer (it’s on a holiday site). I’m not sure it will work but I’ll probably name the page something different when I do put it back up as well.
What about you? If you have a method for dealing with form spam, let us know in the comments below.
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I wonder if I put the page in a folder and instructed via robots.txt to ignore the folder, if that would work?
I need to do something and fast! The number of spam emails is amazingly high.
I wonder if I put the page in a folder and instructed via robots.txt to ignore the folder, if that would work?
I need to do something and fast! The number of spam emails is amazingly high.
@Tsoniki It could. The problem is, most spammy robots don’t respect the robots.txt file. They are only really effective if you are planning to block the good bots like the larger search engines.
One way I know is to use image verification. I do not like it that much because I think it’s a hindrance but it does work. Also, have you tried using another form script? Maybe that form script is not secure.
@Tsoniki It could. The problem is, most spammy robots don’t respect the robots.txt file. They are only really effective if you are planning to block the good bots like the larger search engines.
One way I know is to use image verification. I do not like it that much because I think it’s a hindrance but it does work. Also, have you tried using another form script? Maybe that form script is not secure.