I'm getting spam through the enquiry form on my website

Scenario

1) You are getting spam messages through the actual enquiry form(s) on your website (eg by someone filling in the enquiry form, rather than emailing you directly)

2) You already have anti-spam (eg Google reCaptcha) on your website

What we do to prevent spam through your enquiry forms

We use Google recaptcha; considered the world's leading anti-spam method for preventing bots on forms.

All enquiry forms on our standard off the shelf websites (and most of our existing bespoke websites) use Google Recaptcha to prevent spam using the "I'm not a robot" or similar tick box system.

This is the most accurate system of filtering out spam bots (automated software which fills in these forms with spam) and research shows that it is over 90 percent successful.

Why you still get spam through enquiry forms even with the anti-spam Google Recaptcha

Two reasons:-

1) With regards to automated bots, Google's 90% successful is not 100% successful. Ultimately the only thing that can truly tell whether an email is spam or not us a human being, and as such any automated anti-spam system like Google's recaptcha will not be 100% perfect

2) We are seeing more and more spammers using actual human beings to fill in the forms. Yes, some poor souls have to spend their working day visiting websites and filling in enquiry forms on websites. Often these are people employed in countries with low wages. As these are actual human beings filling in these forms, there's not a huge amount that can be done as it is a human, not a bot.

What else can I do about it?

You'll never achieve 100% success on filtering out spam enquiries vs genuine ones; the cleverer anti-spam systems get the cleverer the spammers get. It's an ongoing battle that will probably last for eternity.

However, there are some things you can do:-

a) If it's the same email address sending you spam, you can block their email address. To do this, log into your website manager and go to the "Enquiries" menu. From here, click on "Blocked numbers and addresses"

b) We'll also soon be adding a feature to block particular words from enquiry forms so you can set the website to ignore enquiries which feature particular spammy words.