Contact form spam is something all website owners have to deal with at some point. It wastes your time as you have to sift through hundreds and thousands of entries to mark the spam and if the others are actual people or bots disguised as them.
Luckily, there are few ways to protect your WordPress site from contact form spam. Let’s check some of them.
What are Spam Bot?
A spambot is a computer program designed by a person or group of people to place spam messages. They gather e-mail addresses from Web sites, newsgroups, special-interest group (SIG) postings, and chat-room conversations. A spambot may post spam in various places such as contact form, comment box, social media platforms or forums.
Why Do Bots Spam Contact Form?
spambots submit wrong information to take over your site, server or email address to spread malware or send more spam emails. They look for ways to destroy your site or email lists by forms. They steal sites, servers and emails so that they have a fresh collection of users to spread spam more.
Why You Need to Block Contact form Spam?
As we discussed above, spambots spam your form to hijack your site. But without that spam can harm your site in many ways. If you use contact forms to gather leads are affected by fake registrations from spambots that can result in low conversions of websites and online forms.
Some bots hijack your website’s comment section and threads on your blogs and forums. These bots spam users’ websites or forms by posting malicious website links, phishing lions, and downloadable exploits that steal personal data. Therefore, new and regular users of your website will get irritated by this kind of activity, and even they may stop visiting your site.
Besides, when millions of bots spam your website and applications, it takes a lot of time to load a page or content for users. Surely, people don’t like a slow loading page. At last, spambots frustrate users and advertisers, and that affects your brand value. Consequently, users went to your competitor’s websites to get their desired things. For this, you lose the credibility of your business. So spam is the ultimate enemy of your business and we need strong spam protection to keep our site safe.
How To Stop Contact Form Spam?
In this section, we will discuss how we can protect our contact form from a spam bot. Though there are many ways to protect the spam bot, today we are going to discuss 5 easy, time-saving and more effective ways.
1. Choose a Right Contact form plugin:
Choosing the best WordPress contact form plugin can be the savior for stopping the entry of spambots on your contact form. Also, contact form gives users a direct line to communicate with your team.
LiveForms Form builder
We recommend the LiveForms plugin for getting built-in spam protection. Unlike other contact form plugins, LiveForms not only comes with spam protection features but also very user friendly. It has all the necessary fields to help you fight form spam every step of the way. This plugin also has features like payment fields, range fields, file uploads, and conditional logic.
If you want to add the LiveForms contact form on your website, install LiveForms plugin from here and activate the plugin.
LiveForms Installation
Once the LiveForms plugin is activated, you will get new menu named “Forms”. Click on the its submenu “Add New”.
LiveForms Contact Form
Here you will see many ready to use forms like Contact Form, Login Form, Donation Form and Support Form. Choose the Contact Form.
LiveForms Contact Form Template
You can also add other fields on your contact form if you want.
2. Enable anti-spam protection:
If you want to prevent spam on your contact form just in a click, enabling the anti-spam protection option is the go-to option for you. When you enable this option it adds a secret token for each submission. But spambot can’t detect the token and stuck while submitting the form.
To enabling this option go to setting option on top of your form page.
LiveForms Anti-spam Protection
On the settings page, you will get three setting options. Go to Basic Settings and check on “Enable anti-spam protection”, anti-spam protection is enabled for your form.
LiveForms Anti-spam Protection
3. Use Math Captcha:
CAPTCHAs are the tool that differentiates between real users and spambots. CAPTCHA works by providing information to a user for interpretation. CAPTCHA provides distorted or overlapping letters and numbers that a user then has to submit via a form field. It prevents access until the characters were verified. Math CAPTCHA is a form of CAPTCHA. It asks you to complete the math equation like addition, subtraction, or multiplication. The equation can show up using numbers or images, therefore bots have no chances. Bots can often only follow set patterns or input randomized characters so it’s difficult for them to guess the right combination. So using CAPTCHA make it easy for you to differentiate between real users and spambots.
Math Captcha
If you are using the LiveForms plugin you can add a Math Captcha on your contact form within a second by using the drag and drop method. Just click on the “Advanced Fields” menu on the left sidebar of your form, drag the Math Captcha field and drop it on your contact form.
LiveForms Math Captcha
4. Use ReCaptcha:
ReCAPTCHA is a system similar to captcha which also serves to protect the website. It requires the user to click a checkbox indicating the user is not a robot. This will either pass the user immediately (with No CAPTCHA) or challenge them to validate whether or not they are human. For the most part, simple ReCAPTCHA puzzles function like CAPTCHA puzzles. ReCAPTCHA also provides image identification puzzles, prompting users to identify images that contain specific things, like street signs or fire hydrants; this is used for Street View analyses.
Re-Captcha
Although many form builder plugins provide the ReCAPTCHA feature but the LiveForms plugin made it very easy to adding Re-Captcha on any of your forms. Check the “Advanced Feilds” and drag the Re-Captcha field, drop it on your form. ReCAPTCHA is added to your contact form!
LiveForms Re-Captcha
5. Block the copy and paste function:
Disabling copy/paste and right-click functionality is another way to prevent your contact form from spam. The spammer is most likely to copy their pre-written pitch and paste it into the text area if you disable copy/paste and right-click functionality, they can’t do that. So they are very unlikely to be determined enough to manually write their entire message into the field and most likely will just close the browser window and move on to the next target on the list. This method also adds the benefit of preventing others from stealing content from anywhere on your site.
6. Install antispam plugin:
To protect your whole WordPress site from spam entries you can use an anti-spam plugin. These plugins protect your contact forms, spam comments, and form submissions. They check every submission and compare them with blacklists of words, names, and email addresses. You can check antispam plugins like Akismet, WordPress Zero Spam, Antispam Bee and JetPack. They will definitely help you to clear your site of unwanted form spam. But before start using any of these plugins, go through their instruction welly so that you can get the best out of their features.
7. Completely block the IP address:
If you notice a lot of spambots are blocking the traffic in your form or website, you can block the traffic from the IP addresses they are coming from. Blocking the IP address adds an extra layer of security to your site. But it can block legitimate traffic from those IPs, so you can do this if there is no other way to control the massive number of spam.
Finally, there is no 100% guaranteed solution to completely prevent form spam on your website but those can make it difficult for spambots to attack your contact form. Also, give a try to the LiveForms plugin to cover all the solutions to your website. Hope you found our article helpful. Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
I am Sidratul Sohrat, a dedicated content writer with a fervent passion for creating engaging and informative content related to technology, business, and marketing.
Contact form spam is something all website owners have to deal with at some point. It wastes your time as you have to sift through hundreds and thousands of entries to mark the spam and if the others are actual people or bots disguised as them.
Luckily, there are few ways to protect your WordPress site from contact form spam. Let’s check some of them.
What are Spam Bot?
A spambot is a computer program designed by a person or group of people to place spam messages. They gather e-mail addresses from Web sites, newsgroups, special-interest group (SIG) postings, and chat-room conversations. A spambot may post spam in various places such as contact form, comment box, social media platforms or forums.
Why Do Bots Spam Contact Form?
spambots submit wrong information to take over your site, server or email address to spread malware or send more spam emails. They look for ways to destroy your site or email lists by forms. They steal sites, servers and emails so that they have a fresh collection of users to spread spam more.
Why You Need to Block Contact form Spam?
As we discussed above, spambots spam your form to hijack your site. But without that spam can harm your site in many ways. If you use contact forms to gather leads are affected by fake registrations from spambots that can result in low conversions of websites and online forms.
Some bots hijack your website’s comment section and threads on your blogs and forums. These bots spam users’ websites or forms by posting malicious website links, phishing lions, and downloadable exploits that steal personal data. Therefore, new and regular users of your website will get irritated by this kind of activity, and even they may stop visiting your site.
Besides, when millions of bots spam your website and applications, it takes a lot of time to load a page or content for users. Surely, people don’t like a slow loading page. At last, spambots frustrate users and advertisers, and that affects your brand value. Consequently, users went to your competitor’s websites to get their desired things. For this, you lose the credibility of your business. So spam is the ultimate enemy of your business and we need strong spam protection to keep our site safe.
How To Stop Contact Form Spam?
In this section, we will discuss how we can protect our contact form from a spam bot. Though there are many ways to protect the spam bot, today we are going to discuss 5 easy, time-saving and more effective ways.
1. Choose a Right Contact form plugin:
Choosing the best WordPress contact form plugin can be the savior for stopping the entry of spambots on your contact form. Also, contact form gives users a direct line to communicate with your team.
We recommend the LiveForms plugin for getting built-in spam protection. Unlike other contact form plugins, LiveForms not only comes with spam protection features but also very user friendly. It has all the necessary fields to help you fight form spam every step of the way. This plugin also has features like payment fields, range fields, file uploads, and conditional logic.
If you want to add the LiveForms contact form on your website, install LiveForms plugin from here and activate the plugin.
Once the LiveForms plugin is activated, you will get new menu named “Forms”. Click on the its submenu “Add New”.
Here you will see many ready to use forms like Contact Form, Login Form, Donation Form and Support Form. Choose the Contact Form.
You can also add other fields on your contact form if you want.
2. Enable anti-spam protection:
If you want to prevent spam on your contact form just in a click, enabling the anti-spam protection option is the go-to option for you. When you enable this option it adds a secret token for each submission. But spambot can’t detect the token and stuck while submitting the form.
To enabling this option go to setting option on top of your form page.
On the settings page, you will get three setting options. Go to Basic Settings and check on “Enable anti-spam protection”, anti-spam protection is enabled for your form.
3. Use Math Captcha:
CAPTCHAs are the tool that differentiates between real users and spambots. CAPTCHA works by providing information to a user for interpretation. CAPTCHA provides distorted or overlapping letters and numbers that a user then has to submit via a form field. It prevents access until the characters were verified. Math CAPTCHA is a form of CAPTCHA. It asks you to complete the math equation like addition, subtraction, or multiplication. The equation can show up using numbers or images, therefore bots have no chances. Bots can often only follow set patterns or input randomized characters so it’s difficult for them to guess the right combination. So using CAPTCHA make it easy for you to differentiate between real users and spambots.
If you are using the LiveForms plugin you can add a Math Captcha on your contact form within a second by using the drag and drop method. Just click on the “Advanced Fields” menu on the left sidebar of your form, drag the Math Captcha field and drop it on your contact form.
4. Use ReCaptcha:
ReCAPTCHA is a system similar to captcha which also serves to protect the website. It requires the user to click a checkbox indicating the user is not a robot. This will either pass the user immediately (with No CAPTCHA) or challenge them to validate whether or not they are human. For the most part, simple ReCAPTCHA puzzles function like CAPTCHA puzzles. ReCAPTCHA also provides image identification puzzles, prompting users to identify images that contain specific things, like street signs or fire hydrants; this is used for Street View analyses.
Although many form builder plugins provide the ReCAPTCHA feature but the LiveForms plugin made it very easy to adding Re-Captcha on any of your forms. Check the “Advanced Feilds” and drag the Re-Captcha field, drop it on your form. ReCAPTCHA is added to your contact form!
5. Block the copy and paste function:
Disabling copy/paste and right-click functionality is another way to prevent your contact form from spam. The spammer is most likely to copy their pre-written pitch and paste it into the text area if you disable copy/paste and right-click functionality, they can’t do that. So they are very unlikely to be determined enough to manually write their entire message into the field and most likely will just close the browser window and move on to the next target on the list. This method also adds the benefit of preventing others from stealing content from anywhere on your site.
6. Install antispam plugin:
To protect your whole WordPress site from spam entries you can use an anti-spam plugin. These plugins protect your contact forms, spam comments, and form submissions. They check every submission and compare them with blacklists of words, names, and email addresses. You can check antispam plugins like Akismet, WordPress Zero Spam, Antispam Bee and JetPack. They will definitely help you to clear your site of unwanted form spam. But before start using any of these plugins, go through their instruction welly so that you can get the best out of their features.
7. Completely block the IP address:
If you notice a lot of spambots are blocking the traffic in your form or website, you can block the traffic from the IP addresses they are coming from. Blocking the IP address adds an extra layer of security to your site. But it can block legitimate traffic from those IPs, so you can do this if there is no other way to control the massive number of spam.
Finally, there is no 100% guaranteed solution to completely prevent form spam on your website but those can make it difficult for spambots to attack your contact form. Also, give a try to the LiveForms plugin to cover all the solutions to your website. Hope you found our article helpful. Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Sidratul Sohrat
I am Sidratul Sohrat, a dedicated content writer with a fervent passion for creating engaging and informative content related to technology, business, and marketing.