Dealing with Spam Form Submissions: FAQ

Spam form submissions are unsolicited or irrelevant messages submitted through website contact forms. These submissions are typically generated by automated bots and may contain promotional content, malicious links, or irrelevant messages.

• Relevance: Evaluate if the content of the message is relevant to your website's products, services, or purpose.
• Grammar and Spelling: Look for grammatical errors, misspellings, or nonsensical phrases that could indicate automated or non-human-generated content.
• Generic Content: Assess if the message seems generic or lacks specific details related to the inquiry, suggesting it could be a mass-produced spam message.
• Unsolicited Links or Attachments: Be cautious of any unsolicited links, attachments, or requests for personal information included in the submission.
• Unusual Requests: Watch out for unusual or suspicious requests that deviate from typical inquiries related to your website's offerings.
• CAPTCHA Confirmation: If your contact form is enabled with CAPTCHA or similar verification methods, ensure that the submission has passed this verification step.
• Confirmation Email: If possible, send a confirmation email to the sender to verify the legitimacy of the submission. Legitimate inquiries are more likely to respond to such confirmation requests.
• Consistency: Cross-check the information provided in the submission with other data you have about the sender or similar inquiries to identify any discrepancies or inconsistencies.
• Trust Your Instincts: Trust your instincts and exercise caution if something about the submission feels off or suspicious.

Spam form submissions occur for several reasons:

• Automated Bot Attacks: Many spam submissions are generated by automated bots programmed to target websites indiscriminately. These bots scour the internet for web forms to fill out automatically, flooding them with irrelevant or promotional content.
• Promotional Purposes: Some spam submissions are driven by promotional motives. Companies or individuals may attempt to advertise their products, services, or websites through mass submissions to website contact forms.
• Gathering Contact Information: Spammers often use web forms as a means to collect email addresses and other contact information for future spam campaigns. By submitting forms with fake or misleading information, they aim to gather valid email addresses that can be targeted with unsolicited messages.
• Malicious Intent: In some cases, spam form submissions may be part of a larger malicious scheme. Spammers may include links to phishing websites, malware-infected downloads, or other harmful content within their submissions, intending to deceive or compromise website visitors.
• Manual Spam Submissions: While automated bots are responsible for a significant portion of spam form submissions, manual submissions also occur. These are typically carried out by individuals who manually fill out website forms with spam content. Manual spammers may be seeking to promote their own interests or disrupt the normal functioning of a website.

Preventing spam form submissions is essential for maintaining the integrity of your website's communication channels. One effective method to deter automated bots and manual spammers is by implementing CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) verification.

CAPTCHA presents users with a challenge, such as identifying distorted text, selecting specific images, or solving simple puzzles. This challenge is easy for humans to complete but difficult for automated bots to decipher. By requiring users to successfully complete a CAPTCHA challenge before submitting a form, you can significantly reduce the number of spam submissions.