No matter what kind of website you have, you probably have a contact form on it. It’s easy for your customers to get in touch with you and ask questions or request more information.
However, spammers can easily abuse a contact form and cause chaos in your inbox. They’ll send thousands of messages through your contact form, hoping that some will get through. This is called contact form spamming, and it’s bad news for site owners and legitimate users because we all know how annoying spam email can be.
Fortunately, there are a few simple steps you can take to protect your site from contact form spam. First, consider using a CAPTCHA code on your contact form. This is a type of challenge-response test that helps to ensure that only human users can submit the form. Finally, make sure to keep an eye on your inbox and delete any spam messages that do get through. By taking these precautions, you can help to keep your contact form spam-free.
What is contact form spamming?
Contact form spamming is when spammers use your contact form on your website or blog to send unsolicited emails. Spammers know that if they can get their message into the inbox of someone, they have a much better chance of getting them to respond and take action.
Contact forms are easy targets because they are part of many websites and blogs, making them more likely to be found by search engines and bots than other types of pages.
In addition, contact forms are easy-to-use tools that require little technical knowledge and don’t require any software installation before sending out messages. This makes it easier for spammers who want to reach thousands of people at once by submitting hundreds or thousands of messages through one form.
Why do spammers target contact forms?
Spammers often target contact forms because they want to harvest email addresses, IP addresses, website names, and URLs. These are all valuable pieces of information for them.
Spammers will use your contact form to harvest email addresses so they can sell them online or send spam emails using the addresses themselves. This is a huge problem if you have an email newsletter, as the spam emails could be delivered under your name (and potentially damage your brand).
How do spammers mess with your contact forms?
Spammers are a sneaky bunch. They use bots to fill out your contact forms, then they use your form to send you spam. Or they use it to sell products and services. Or they use the free trial aspect of subscriptions, a common tactic with spammers, because it doesn’t require them to pay any money upfront.
Whatever their plot, there are things you can do about it.
What’s the solution to stop contact form spam?
There are several ways to prevent contact form spam, and they include:
1. Upgrade Your Traffic
If your website receives a lot of traffic, it might be time for an upgrade. As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. If your website doesn’t look professional, then spammers will think it’s easy pickings, and they won’t bother with other sites.
One way to improve your site’s look and feel is by using a good-quality theme that matches your business brand.
Make sure you have a privacy policy on your website, too—this helps put people at ease when they fill out your contact form or leave comments on your blog posts.
2. Ask to Qualify
The second way you can reduce spam is by asking your website visitors to qualify themselves before they’re able to fill out your contact form.
This involves them providing you with more information about themselves, such as a phone number, email address, or some form of identification, such as a driver’s license or credit card number.
This helps weed out those who should not be contacting your business from those with legitimate reasons.
3. Use Multi-Step Forms
One of the simplest ways to prevent spam from reaching your inbox is using a multi-step form. This means that after someone submits their details on your website, they will have to complete several more steps before being allowed access to your inbox.
These additional steps can include verifying their email address or answering a question about your business before they receive an automated response with further instructions on how to proceed with their request.
Even if spammers bypass this first hurdle, there are still plenty of other ways to stop them in their tracks.
4. Fence Form Visibility
A better solution is to use a hidden form field that determines whether a message comes from an actual human being or a bot. This method works because it targets spammers who use automated scripts instead of real people.
Once you’ve weeded those bots out, the remaining messages are likely from real people with legitimate questions or concerns about your business—people who want to contact you.
5. Use Google reCAPTCHA
The next tactic is to use Google reCAPTCHA. Many websites and apps use this service to help prevent spam and abuse on contact forms. It’s a free service from Google that requires users to solve a simple problem before submitting any data.
This can annoy legitimate users, but it works well for stopping spammers in their tracks because they don’t have access to the right tools or the required knowledge to solve these kinds of problems.
6. Accelerate Follow-up
Directly following up with a second email is an essential part of the process, especially if you invite people to fill out your form or sign up for your service.
This is your last chance to get more information and ensure they are not spammers. It may surprise you how many people don’t reply after you send them the first email. Therefore, you must follow up with another message as soon as possible to ensure they are real subscribers.
7. Use Honeypots
Honeypots are decoy contact forms you can use to track spammers. They’re not real contact forms, but they look like them, which is enough for spammers to try and fill in.
By placing honeypots on your website or blog, you can watch as the spammers attempt to fill out your forms. Spamming is like fishing; it involves sending thousands upon thousands of emails until one gets through—and then repeating this process.
Besides providing insight into how often spammers are trying their luck at getting into your inboxes via various avenues, you can also use honeypots as an early warning system to prevent these unwanted intruders from infiltrating your business.
8. Don’t Allow Links
One of the most common ways spammers will try to get a hold of you is through links. If they include a link in their message, they can direct their victims to a site where they can be infected with malware or phished for personal information.
To prevent this, make sure no links are allowed in any portion of your contact form. There should be no place for anyone to click on, whether in the body of an email or within the subject line itself. Make sure you use your legitimate business links when creating your email signature file (the block at the bottom of every email).
Any legitimate business would never place unverified hyperlinks in their signature block because it could result in legal problems if someone accidentally clicked them and led them somewhere unsafe.
9. Confirm Email Addresses
You can use a third-party service to confirm email addresses. These services will send an email to the address you enter and ask that person to click on a link inside the message for their address to be added to your list.
If they don’t click on the link within a specific time frame, their address will not be added. You might also choose one of these services that check for spam and phishing attempts; this ensures that you only collect valid addresses from people who want to receive communications from you.
10. Use Time Analysis
Time analysis simply means that you will analyze the time it takes for each visitor to fill out your contact form. If someone is filling out the form in less than 10 seconds, they are most likely not doing so on purpose and are more likely to be spammers.
To do this, you need to know how long each of your visitors takes to fill out your contact form. You can do this by installing some sort of plugin or using JavaScript code (which is faster).
Once you know how long it takes, you can use it as an extra layer of protection against spamming contact forms.
