What is Web Form SPAM Protection?
Web form spam protection refers to various methods and tools used to prevent spam submissions and abuse of web-based forms on websites. This is important to stop bots and spammers from submitting contact forms, sign up forms, comment forms, and other public web forms multiple times.
Some common methods of web form spam protection include:
- CAPTCHA - Requires users to solve a visual puzzle to submit the form, which humans can complete but computer bots cannot.
- Honeypots - Hidden form fields that should be left blank, catches spammers trying to auto-fill everything.
- Spam blacklists - Block submissions from IP addresses on lists of known spammers.
- Limit submission frequency - Prevent high volumes of submissions from the same IP or user.
- Input validation - Check data submitted matches expected formats to catch spam.
- Spam filtering - Use algorithms and rules to detect text patterns of spam in form data.
- Spam score thresholds - Assign risk scores to submissions and block ones over a threshold.
Relying on multiple web form spam protection methods in layers is most effective to maximize blocking bots while allowing valid human users to successfully submit forms. This protects websites from having their public forms, contact addresses, bandwidth, and databases overloaded.