Is there any way to prevent spam contacts from Russia signing up to my email list? I keep deleting them as they come in, but just had to delete another 3 today.
Thanks!
I agree, so many spam emails are getting into our system. How does this happen and how can we prevent it?
hi @SusanTipton and @karenl – are you using Google reCAPTCHA for your email sign up form? That is a great place to start: https://documentation.vin65.com/blog/Updated-reCAPTCHA-Process
However, it is not a blanket fix and some spammy contacts still get through. Another tactic some wineries have had success with is adding an additional qualifying question to the sign up form like “What’s your favorite wine?” Something fun that won’t be offputting to people who want to sign up, but will discourage the bots. Hope that helps!
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Thanks so much Adrienne for the great ideas!
Susan Tipton, Owner/Winemaker
22353 N. Tretheway Road
Acampo, CA 95220
209-333-6102
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Adrienne’s solution is the easiest, best solution available. There is one other solution, but it would require a developer to implement it. Most of these forms are filled out by bots, not humans. The other solution is to put a field on the form for something important sounding, but info that you’re not really collecting, like phone number. Then, the developer would place that field outside of the screen area, so a user can’t see it and, therefore, would never fill it out. When a bot reads the page code, it “sees” the field and fills it out. The developer would then write validation code that would see if the field is filled out and will reject the entry if it is. This is called a “honeypot” since the bot can’t resist filling out the field that a real user never would.
This is how I do it, but I’m a developer, so it’s easy for me. Otherwise, I would use the reCAPTCHA and see if that takes care of your problem.
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Thanks for the info Jeff, much appreciated!
Sue
Don’t be like me and assume that you did set it up already, check your forms again. I have been getting 3 of these spam contacts daily at an increasing rate. I just added reCAPTCHA to my forms. Will report back on results.
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Thanks Dan!
There’s no silver bullet to keep the bots out. We have qualifying questions and enough get through. They’ll just fill in gen23jnk2iu23li for the question. I do think they stop enough spammers that it’s worth trying.
The most common answer to our question is “BMW”
Update on this: Since implementing the captcha I have had zero of the weird Russian contacts and form submissions, and zero spam submissions overall. Very pleased.
Thanks Dan, I’ve added it to my newsletter signup, but looks like I’ll need it on all fronts.
Appreciate your help!