How To Prevent Spam From Your Website Forms

We have all seen it, whether in English or another language. A email comes in that says in the subject line that it is a contact from our website, only to find out instead a qualified lead it is some type of spam message of a company soliciting their products or services. Sometimes these emails come in groups or 10 or even 20 seconds apart and flood our inbox. Well, that is because it is a spam bot, a software program that scours through websites looking for form to fill out with spam.

Years ago when this happened to our clients there was nothing we could really do about it, other than chalk it up to a disadvantage of having your business online and to ignore the spam emails. Nowadays, there is a new technology that can stop the website spam, it is called reCaptcha and it is a Google product.

Whether you have a standard Html/CSS based website or a CMS based website, reCaptcha can be easily installed to stop unwanted spam mail. In an HTML/CSS site, it takes about an hour to install. For CMS based sites, it is as easy as installing a plug-in and activating it.

Pros of Using reCaptcha

Well, the clear benefit of using reCaptcha is that it will reduce spam because most spam comments that are submitted by automated bots. reCaptcha prevents bots from abusing your website forms. Combining reCaptcha with Akismet can completely prevent the number of spam comments on a WordPress site.

Cons of Using reCaptcha

reCaptcha is not useful in stopping the manually submitted spam comments. Not only do spam bots scour the web to submit spam into forms, but also human spammers will look for forms to spam as well. They simply copy and paste their data into the fields and can be easily done in 20 seconds.

Another disadvantage of using reCaptcha is the code you have to enter to actually submit the form and not return an error can be difficult to read or make out. The nice thing about reCaptcha is there is a code refresh button if the initial code you are to type in is too hard to make out. By clicking refresh, reCaptcha immediately returns a new code that will most likely be more legible.

If you are interested in getting reCaptcha installed on your site to prevent the automated spam bot from attacking your forms, contact us today.