This is a simple checkbox that users must tick off for their contact form submission to go through. Add reCAPTCHAĪnother great way to protect your contact form from spam is to add a reCAPTCHA field. For example, plugins like Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms have honeypots. The best way to enable a honeypot is to use a contact form plugin with built-in honeypot functionality. Best of all, when the bot fills out your form, that form submission will go straight to the trash instead of your inbox. Spam bots will see these fields and try to submit them, revealing themselves as a bot. Honeypots are hidden contact fields that spammers are likely to fill in, but users never see. How to Directly Prevent Contact Form Spam 1. Note: If you don’t want to bother with solutions, but are looking for someone to do it for you, view our WordPress Website Management Packages. However, there are some steps you can take to reduce the amount of spam that gets through successfully. Spamming is often an uphill battle because spammers and bots constantly change their methods. Even worse, they might pilfer your email list, so they have a new set of people to bug with their spammy messages. They’re always looking for ways to assume control of your site, server, or email address so they can use it to send out spam emails. Spam bots are automated computer programs that submit incorrect information onto your contact or email signup form.

If you would like to prevent spam emails from Google Forms from landing in your inbox, Gmail filters can help.There’s nothing more annoying than contact form spam bots burying your inbox in mountains of fake submissions. Here’s a screenshot of one such email from Google Forms that easily tricked the spam filters. Google Forms will automatically email a copy of the form response, including all the pictures and links contained in the original form, to the email address that was entered in the form. Now the spammers can simply open the Google Form, fill in the recipient’s email address and hit the submit button.

Inside the Form settings, they turn on the option to “Collect Email Addresses” including the option to send “Response receipts” when a new form is submitted.

The form creator uploads images for the various question fields and also adds links to spam websites in the form.

A public form is created with Google Forms.

Here’s how spam emails are sent through Google Forms. The emails are sent through Google Forms and because the messages originate from Google’s own email servers, they do not get caught in the spam filters. Gmail is very effective at filtering spam emails but spammers seem to have figured out a new way to bypass the spam filters and send emails that land right in the user’s inbox. How spammers use a simple setting in Google Forms to send junk emails through Google's own mailing servers and completely avoid the Gmail spam filters.

Google form spam bot