Why can’t I stop contact form spam
A contact form on your website can be useful but it can also present problems that are only discovered after you have been using it for a while.
Why is a Contact form Useful?
A contact form on your website is really only useful for one reason. It’s useful to let the person filling in the form know what information you want to receive.
For example, if you primarily call people on the phone, you will need to receive the person’s phone number via the contact form. This information may not be supplied if someone emails you.
What ate the downsides of having a contact form on your website?
The downsides of having a contact form include…
Typos
The person filling in your contact form may mistype their message, which is mildly annoying. More troubling is that they may mistype their phone number or email address. The consequences of this can mean that you are unable to reply to the person sending the contact form.
For any business not replying to a client enquiry is bad form. It’s difficult to blame the client for their mistake, when they believe that you have simply ignored their contact request.
spam
Spammers are able to use your contact form to supply their information to you via the form.
How do I stop spammers from using my contact form?
We can add Google Captcha to your WordPress contact form. V3 of Google Captcha is non-invasive. It does not appear if the Captcha feels that you are a human. If it feels that you are a spammer/Bot, then the captcha will appear.
But I still receive spam emails via my website contact form
I’m often asked if we can simply ban the spammer, but this is not as simple as it may first appear.
We can’t ban them, because they are not emailing you. Your website is emailing you. Your contact form is emailing you and you don’t want to ban your site from emailing you.
So, what can we do about this problem?
We can set up a filter on the server.
The server filter will kick in before your device asks the server for any mail
to do this…
log in to your webmail stackmail.com
go to > settings > filters > create
> RULE = WHERE body CONTAINS (the text of their name or their email address)
Remember, we are letting the rule search the body of the email, because their email address is not sending you the email, the email address is in the body of the email.
> ACTIONS = delete message OR move to junk OR move to a folder you have created
That’s it
