Form-based spam

David Clover  12 June 2008 09:16:50

Along with others who run web services, we've noticed an increasing trend towards 'form-based spam' - this is when a spam robot finds a form and fills in the fields on a web-based enquiry form with junk information and then submits it to the site.

Typically, this can be prevented by some straightforward measures such as asking for a security code or characters from a 'captcha' to be entered before a submission can be accepted. We've implemented a very simple version of this on some of our webforms which feed to the University's CRM 'VOICE' system and the result has been quite effective.

I've been reviewing alternatives - and have found a few useful postings from places like Webaim and Blam! which we'll look and and try out when we have time.

• Comments [0]