Adding a security question at the end of the form will keep spammers and robots away from your contact form. The questions at the end of your form can be simple as a sum of 2+5, or you can ask the spelling of an easy word. Spammers and robots won't be able to answer them, so they won't be able to complete the contact form and click on submit.
You wouldn't want to deal with robots and spammers; therefore, you must make a barrier between you and them, using a cyber security firewall. Here are a few methods that spammers and robots use for contact forms:
One of the common methods used by robots and spammers to complete your contact form is using a forged or fake email id. If you try to get back to that specific email address, the email will bounce back.
A robot or spammer can use a fake website link; they might complete your contact form. That link might contain some kind of virus.
If you want to secure your contact form against robots and spammers, then here are a few ways that will help you out:
It is a computer-generated test to test whether a human is submitting the contact form or a robot is doing it.
You can integrate CAPTCHA into your contact form by opening WordPress forms, opening WPForms, then opening settings and clicking on CAPTCHA. You will see different types of CAPTCHA that you can integrate into your contact form.
· CAPTCHA can keep spammers and robots away from your contact form.
· You get fewer spammers on your website and fake subscriber requests.
· Not all browsers can support it.
· Sometimes reading CAPTCHA can get hard for a human to read as well.
A human won't be able to see the honeypot field, but if the robot is filling out the form, it would only be visible to them.
While creating a form, you can add a hidden field for robots and spammers, but it will be invisible to human users. You just have to hide the decoy field, and if a spammer fills the form, it will certainly fill that decoy field, and you can catch it immediately.
· It will increase the security of your contact form and website.
· You don't get much spam subscribed to your messages.
It won't detect cyber-attacks every time.
The process of testing input data submitted by the applicant gets cleansed by data validation, whether the information is according to the form requirements or not.
You will have to create an HTML for your contact form, then read values, check values, and then you can use those values you received from the form and send it to the server or the display values for data cleansing.
You won't have to deal with malformed data because input validation will cleanse it.
· If you want to change the values, you must re-validate the specific changes to the entire code for the data cleansing process.
· Making changes according to your new requirements requires much time and coding.
You hire a company, or a person not affiliated with your company directly offers security services to ensure that no robot or spammer can complete and submit your contact form.
You get in contact with web-based services that are reliable and trustworthy for creating a contact form and dealing with the public on your behalf.
· It will reduce your company's operational costs.
· You won't have to think about robots and spammers anymore.
· Relying on third-party services might cause damage to your business reputation.
· Miscommunication might become a problem while dealing with a third party.
If you don't want robots and spammers to fill your contact form, you will have to make a barrier, as we have discussed different methods like CAPTCHA, honeypot field, input validation, and third-party services. You must choose the right method depending on your website requirements. It would be best to go honeypot field because it is the only way to keep robots and spammers away from your contact form.
Protectumus acts as a web application firewall (WAF) and scans the website for known malware. Once the malware is found it will be automatically removed. The software uses Artificial intelligence and Machine learning to learn from previous detections and is able to act alone.
Bad bots are commonly created to perform malicious tasks and hacking purposes. These bots work in evasive manners and are commonly used by cybercriminals, nefarious parties, and fraudsters. In short, anyone involved in criminal activity may use bad bots.
