Problem as stated by many website owners:
Someone is sending me spam through my contact form.
Backstory/Details:
Technically, a spammer has chosen to fill the form out manually (as in.. a human has chosen to personally fill it out) because they cannot get a script (aka “bot“) to do the dirty work. This is because we have a very effective Google reCaptcha system on our forms that blocks non-humans from being able to fill them out. However, we know it is still frustrating to receive spam through your website’s forms.
Spammers using the form to send you solicitation are usually submitted by the same person however, they are sophisticated enough to use an IP spoofing system that sets a different IP address for each form submission. They use the same name in that same email because they want you to respond. As a result, there is no way to completely stop them because the spammer is actually a human. If we stop humans from filling your forms out, we will also be stopping your human customers. Our forms have the ability to block certain keywords but be cautious, if you choose the wrong words to block you might be blocking legitimate customers along with it.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Don’t mark your forms as spam. Your email program will then mark ALL form submissions as spam
Solution:
Possible Solution A:
We can remove forms all together. (not ideal)
Possible Solution B:
We can replace your forms with another form system but this costs anywhere from $25 to $125 (depending on how many forms you have and how complicated/long each form is). This more sophisticated system is more powerful, but will most likely not stop the human spammer. This is because there are no form programs in the world that are smart enough to recognize the difference between a customer filling a form out and a spammer when they are using “safe” words.
Possible Solution C (recommended):
Wait it out. If you’re patient and give it another week, you will find that these people have decided to move on. Imagine it like you have a door-to-door salesperson that is trying to sell you something, after a few times of you not answering the door they go away. Sure, there will be more, but again… they go away after no success. If you continue to see these emails from the same people, then by all means contact us. We can see if we can come up with a solution. In our experience though, no one has ever needed to go further, because the spammers do eventually go away.
Summary
These are real people filling out the forms. It is the reality of the modern internet.
