Is there any way to block spam form sign ups? | Community
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A
Anonymous
February 11, 2015
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Is there any way to block spam form sign ups?

  • February 11, 2015
  • 5 replies
  • 7930 views
We are getting some spammy sign ups on our forms.  For instance, the first name may be "ab" and the last name "cd."  Is there any way to prevent that kind of thing?

Jennifer
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    Best answer by kpara3-2
    Hey Jennifer,

    If you have someone on your team that knows some code and can write it for your form submit, you can keep certain people out of the database. However, for names that look made up I usually make smart campaigns to mark them as not prospects (ex: anyone without a vowel in their first name, etc). Unfortunately something spammy is always going to get through.

    Kim

    5 replies

    K
    kpara3-2Accepted solution
    Level 9
    February 11, 2015
    Hey Jennifer,

    If you have someone on your team that knows some code and can write it for your form submit, you can keep certain people out of the database. However, for names that look made up I usually make smart campaigns to mark them as not prospects (ex: anyone without a vowel in their first name, etc). Unfortunately something spammy is always going to get through.

    Kim
    A
    Anonymous
    February 11, 2015
    Indeed - but I appreciate the tip.  Thank you!
      A
      Anonymous
      February 11, 2015
      Hi Jennifer, 

      There is another technique you could try that doesn't involve coding, and has worked pretty well for me in the past.  It's a simple 'honeypot' method where all you really need is a hidden field on your form, a smart list, and a trigger campaign or two depending on your internal workflows.

      To set this up, simply create a hidden string field on your form (you can call the field 'spam catcher', 'honeypot' or anything descriptive like that..) and leave the default value as "null".  The idea is that this field wouldn't be filled out by a human - but would be populated by spam bots - because while invisible to human users on your landing pages, bots will see all the form fields in the form code.

      With this in mind, you would set up a smart list that looks for 'honeypot field' = not empty; this list will essentially collect all the form submissions likely coming in from spam bots.  Based on this list, you could use a smart campaign to unassign the leads from sales reps, or (depending on the volume of spam coming in) just go through them manually and determine if any are worth investigating.

      Good luck!
        A
        Anonymous
        July 2, 2015

        Thank you - that is a very helpful idea!

        A
        Anonymous
        February 11, 2015
        Very smart!  Thank you!
        A
        Anonymous
        July 2, 2015

        One thing we implemented that doesn't block the spam emails, but prevents them from going to sales is email validation upon form submit. By doing this we've seen our email delivery increase and caught the "bad" emails. We have found about 5% of our form submissions are junk and this has really helped us. We use Informatica (StrikeIron) for this. The tool isn't perfect, but it catches the majority.

          A
          Anonymous
          July 2, 2015

          Another great tip - thank you!

          On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 1:18 PM, Nichole Cunningham - PRODUCTION <

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