Web Site Tip of the Month - March 07

This Month's Tip - Out Out, Darn Spam

OK, last month we talked about obfuscation and other ways for people to contact you without leaving your email address alone and naked on your website. One of the ways is to use forms.

So, now you've got a great form on your website and your customers and potential customers can contact you at will, any time of the day or night. And so can the spammers.

Now, it doesn't make sense to me that a business owner, getting shady stock offers on his/her online form instead of the expected sales or customer contacts would jump in and shell out any money, but it must happen somewhere or the spammers wouldn't keep trying it.

Spam is the number one reason that many sites gave up their guestbooks. We had a client whose guestbook was inundated daily with hundreds of bogus entries containing links to drug, gambling and porn sites. So, how did we stop it?
CAPTCHA

You've seen it before. It's that picture with the random numbers and letters all stretched and twisted that they ask you to type in box. Developed at Carnegie Mellon University, CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Basically, it's just a way to make sure that it's a person who is filling out the form and not an evil spambot.

Now, that weird little box isn't the only form of CAPTCHA. Another type asks a question and then asks you to type out the answer. Some people prefer the question type of CAPTCHA because they don't keep the visually impaired from using your form the way that relying on a picture does.

So how do you add CAPTCHA to your website before you're buried in spam? If you already use forms or a guestbook on your site, check the online forums for the item you are using. Some, like Advanced GuestBook have code there that you can add. If that doesn't work, you can try using a free script like Motobit Software's Captcha ASP script. Not that hands on with the code? You can try a free tool like the ones from Protect Web Form or Human Verify.

CAPTCHA isn't perfect. Spammers are working on ways to get around those pictures with improved OCR and other tools. But the good guys are still looking for improved ways to keep them out. Tools like KittenAuth are currently being developed. KittenAuth works on the idea that only a human will be able to pick out the pictures of kittens from a random group of 12 similar animals. Plus, kittens are a lot cuter than numbers and letters.

Finally, CAPTCHA won't stop your online form or forum from being spammed manually. But since manual spam is pretty rare, it should cover the bulk of your problems until something better comes along.

 

Remember, on the web, your web site is you

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