6 Tips to Reduce Spam Form Entries
If you have forms on public web pages, you’re bound to get some spam. Spam form entries are a frustrating part of collecting leads, growing an email list, and giving people opportunities to contact you.
Why is spam so common? Because spammers set up spam bots. These are automated scripts that troll the web for forms and submit some content.
Why do people spam forms? For backlinks, mostly. Google will boost a website’s rankings if it has a lot of links, so less-than-honest marketers create bots that spam forms with links. If any of those links show up on a website, their site’s ranking improves. This method of “marketing” isn’t as effective as it used to be, but it doesn’t require the “marketer” to do anything but let a script run.
In other cases, spammers set up a group email address that they put into the email field on your form. They add a message with links to the message or comment field. If you have a default auto-response email set up (like most forms do by default), you will unwittingly send a spammy message to a list of email addresses.
In the worst cases, some bots will use your form to inject malicious code into your website. These bots could damage your pages or databases, harvest sensitive information, or even disable your site entirely.
Needless to say, it’s important to stop spam form entries however you can! Let’s dive into some strategies to reduce them.
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