Have you noticed an increase in spam email through your contact form lately?
If so, it’s not just you! There has been a massive increase in the volume of SPAM emails hitting contact forms on older websites, even those with Anti-spam CAPTCHA already enabled.
This could be due in part to the age of some websites as the Anti-spam measures installed at the time of development, will most likely be out of date. Email spammers are continuously evolving ways to beat these measures by constantly updating their technology and their spam bots are getting smarter, which means your contact form could be behind on dealing with them.
If you’re website contact forms are being spammed, you will notice it by the amount of emails you receive into your inbox or spam folder. Or you will have been notified by your web developer or hosting company, if there is a security feature on the server to detect higher spikes of email traffic from your account.
How do you solve / prevent email spam through website contact forms?
OSD would advise that you contact your website developer to confirm you have the latest measures in place, or request that they update or install the latest Anti-spam to any forms on your website.
There are many options available to help reduce spam on contact forms that you will have spotted on other websites. These range from hidden fields that you won’t see and only bots will fill in called Honeypots (great name!), to visible “Captchas” such as Google’s Recaptcha checkbox ( the one which asks you to declare “I am not a robot”).
Google have recently updated their Anti-Spam CAPTCHA technology to better identify and block spam traffic interacting with your website. You should discuss this as a potential option for your own website anti-spam measures. Below is a two minute video that explains how it works.
If you need assistance with updating your website or contact forms, OSD would be happy to help.
Please give us a call in Sligo on 071 9170024 or Dublin on 01 539 4488 to arrange a consultation.
