Anyone with a website contact form has had this happen. You see you’ve received a new prospect message and get excited, only to open the message and see it’s written in Russian. Or, maybe the message contains a threat to sue you, a pitch for sketchy SEO services or NSFW content.
Traditionally, the go-to method to stop these bot-generated form messages is to add CAPTCHA, or it’s Google form, reCAPTCHA. Both are simply some sort of puzzle or question that presumably could only be answered by a human. While CAPTCHAs in any form are way better than having no protection, they are seemingly becoming more ineffective. This seems to be true especially the newer “invisible” reCAPTCHA. I don’t have a full technical answer as to why this is the case, but it’s apparent that we’re getting outsmarted by the bots. When your site is in the crosshairs of the bot army, it can be an annoying time-waster and a potential security problem.
For the past two years or so, I’ve had great success blocking out the nonsense with CleanTalk Anti-Spam and Security Firewall. In addition to replacing CAPCTHAs completely (goodbye goofy picture puzzles!), CleanTalk Anti-Spam proactively checks form entries against their database of known troublemakers and prevents their messages from getting through. CleanTalk protects all your forms: contact forms, email list signups, blog comment forms and even ecommerce. When paired with their Firewall service, your site will also be spared the relentless brute-force login attacks common to WordPress and other CMS platforms. Once implemented, it work immediately and you can even track what messages are blocked and get email reports on activity. Once you have it, it’s shocking to see how much your website is under assault every day!
CleanTalk Anti-Spam and Firewall are included in the Website Email & Form Protection PowerPack service. Click to learn more.