| At some time or another we've all gotten unsolicited | | | | a person. You've probably seen these and wondered |
| commercial emails in our email box - Commonly called | | | | what they were for. Well that's what their for - To |
| Email Spam. But did you know if you put a contact | | | | Stop formmail spam. This works great except you'll |
| form on your site to protect your email you could still | | | | loose good people who have a hard time figuring out |
| get Web Form Spam? | | | | exactly what letters and numbers the captcha image |
| Web Form Spam is when someone (or something) fills | | | | is trying to show them. Personally I've not submitted a |
| out your web form with random pieces of information | | | | few forms because I simply gave up trying to figure |
| and submits the form. If you're using a simple | | | | out the captcha image. |
| web-form-to-email script like formmail you'll likely see a | | | | Here is a little known way to prevent 90% of your |
| bunch of form submissions with no data in them. That's | | | | formmail spam without forcing your users to answers |
| web form spam. But why would someone do this? | | | | a confusing captcha image: |
| Usually they think the form is posting their data | | | | First Make sure your web form has most (if not all) of |
| somewhere on your web site and not being sent to | | | | your fields set to be required. Required means the field |
| your inbox. The spammers try to submit the form with | | | | must be complete for the form results to get your |
| links back to their own site to build up their search | | | | email box. Don't use fancy javascript form validation |
| engine rankings. | | | | because the web-bots don't follow it anyway. |
| So how do you protect your inbox from being flooded | | | | Remember they are only submitting the form based |
| with Web Form Spam? Well it helps a little bit to know | | | | on the raw HTML code. Not reading it in a browser. |
| how they are doing this. Most of them simply scan | | | | Secondly use a drop-down selection box and also |
| your website for web forms. They have scripts (or | | | | make it required. This forces the web-bots to select |
| web-bots) to do this. A human being almost never | | | | something from a list rather than just typing nonsense |
| does it. When they find a form on your site, the | | | | into a form field. This one technique can stop most of |
| web-bot fills in the fields and hits "submit". Then you get | | | | your web form spam in its tracks. You don't need a |
| an email with a partially filled in form usually with | | | | bunch of drop down selections boxes on your web |
| dozens (or hundreds) of links back to the spammer's | | | | form- one will be enough. |
| site. | | | | If you're not a programmer there are web form to |
| A lot of people use captcha images to protect their | | | | email services like mine that will help protect your email |
| email box from web form spam. Captcha images are | | | | from web form spam in exactly the manner I've told |
| those little pictures with random letters and numbers | | | | you. |
| that you have to type into a text box to prove you're | | | | |