WordPress Contact Form Spam: Effective Ways to Stop It Fast

When it comes to generating repeated engagement on your WordPress website, setting up contact forms will be excellent. You can get inquiries on your business or enterprise and understand what the target audience is looking for. But one of the common issues that may arise from this feature is the contact form spam.

Spammers often exploit vulnerabilities in contact form plugins or poorly configured forms to send unsolicited messages, compromising the website security. Fortunately, there are several effective strategies to handle WordPress contact form spam.

With everything from reCAPTCHA to Honeypot Antispam, we’ll see how the expert WordPress developers stop this issue. But first, let’s discuss this vulnerability in detail.

What is a Contact Form Spam?

Contact form spam is unsolicited, unwanted messages that are sent through a contact form on a website. These messages are typically automated and sent in large quantities, often with the goal of collecting email addresses, promoting spam, or even spreading malware.

Spammers often target contact forms because they are a relatively easy way to reach a large number of people. By automating the process of sending messages, spammers can send thousands or even millions of messages in a short period of time.

What is the Impact of Contact Form Spam on WordPress Websites?

Spamming through the contact form on your website can affect it significantly. Let’s look at the potential consequences.

• Clogged inbox: Spam messages can overwhelm your inbox, making it difficult to find legitimate messages.
• Wasted time: Dealing with spam can be time-consuming, taking away from more important tasks.
• Security risks: Some spam messages may contain malicious links or attachments that can compromise your website’s security.
• Poor user experience: Spam can frustrate visitors who are trying to contact you, leading to a negative perception of your website.
• Reputation damage: If your website becomes known as a source of spam, it can damage your reputation and deter potential customers.

It’s important to take steps to prevent contact form spam to protect your website and maintain a positive user experience.

So, do you want to avert this negative impact? Then consult with our WordPress developers. Or follow along through the next section.

How to Stop WordPress Contact Form Spam?

With its flexibility, WordPress offers a variety of tactics to prevent and stop WordPress contact form spam. Let’s discuss a few prevalent ones.

Use reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is a Google service that helps distinguish between humans and bots. This widely-used tool prevents spam and abuse on the websites, which includes WordPress contact forms.

How does it work?

1. Integration: You integrate reCAPTCHA into your contact form using a plugin or by manually adding code to your website.
2. Challenge Presentation: When a user tries to submit the form, reCAPTCHA presents them with a challenge. This could be a simple task like identifying images or solving a puzzle.
3. User Interaction: The user completes the challenge.
4. Verification: reCAPTCHA analyzes the user’s response to determine if they are a human or a bot. If the response is deemed human, the form submission is allowed to proceed.

It’s highly accurate, easy to implement, user-friendly, and free. And you can significantly reduce the amount of spam targeting your contact forms.

How to Stop WordPress Contact Form Spam with reCAPTCHA?

reCAPTCHA helps with human verification, bot detection, and customizable challenges. Here’s how you proceed with this methodology.

Step 1: First off, visit Google reCAPTCHA site.

Step 2: On the homepage, click on “Admin Console” and sign into your Google account.

Step 3: Register your website with the reCAPTCHA platform. Enter your website in the “Label” field.

Step 4: Now you can select between “reCAPTCHA v3” and “reCAPTCHA v2”. With the latter, you can choose between “I’m not a robot” Checkbox and “Invisible reCAPTCHA”.

Step 5: After choosing your reCAPTCHA, add the full domain name and accept the terms of service along with “Send alerts to owners”. Then click “Submit”.

Step 6: After your domain has been registered, you’ll see the Site and Secret Keys. Copy them.

Step 7: Now, log into the WordPress admin dashboard.

Step 8: Open the settings related to the WordPress plugin for contact form. Let’s say you are using WPForms.

Step 9: Within WPForms settings, go to the “CAPTCHA” section and click on “reCAPTCHA”. That will open a form with fields like “Site Key” and “Secret Key”.

Step 10: Select “Checkbox reCAPTCHA v2” and enter the Site and Secret Keys. Then submit the credentials.

Step 11: In WPForms settings, select “reCAPTCHA” from the “Add Fields”.

A pop-up message will appear showing reCAPTCHA has been enabled. Then it will be harder for bots to bypass the website’s security.

Install a Security Firewall Plugin

A security firewall acts as a shield, protecting your WordPress website from various online threats, including spam. By blocking malicious traffic and detecting potential attacks, a firewall can significantly reduce the risk of spam reaching your contact form.

Some of the best benefits of a security firewall are real-time threat detection, malware scanning, intrusion prevention, and DDoS protection. But it can be excellent way to stop contact form spams as well.

How to Stop WordPress Contact Form Spam with reCAPTCHA?

Step 1: Select a reputable firewall plugin that suits your needs and budget.

Step 2: Download and install the WordPress plugin from the official repository or the developer’s website.

Step 3: Activate the plugin to enable its features.

Step 4: Follow the plugin’s instructions to configure its settings. This may involve setting up rules, scanning your website, and configuring security options.

A few popular plugins for security firewall plugins are Wordfence and Sucuri Security.

Use Google Invisible reCAPTCHA

Google Invisible reCAPTCHA is a more user-friendly version of reCAPTCHA. It doesn’t require users to complete a visible challenge unless the system suspects they might be a bot. This makes the process smoother for human users while still providing effective protection against spam.

The invisible reCAPTCHA works in the background, analyzing user behavior to determine if they are human or a bot. This includes factors like mouse movements, typing patterns, and other interactions with the website.

If the system detects any suspicious activity, it may present a visible CAPTCHA challenge to verify the user’s identity.

How to Use Invisible reCAPTCHA for Stopping Contact Form Spam?

Follow the same process as normal reCAPTCHA. The only difference comes when you are choosing the type of reCAPTCHA from the Google website and configuring the settings on your WordPress dashboard.

Now, when a user tries to submit a contact form, the WordPress website will enable the invisible reCAPTCHA automatically. They will see the reCAPTCHA logo in the bottom right corner, letting them know the site is protected against spambots.

This method has several benefits, like a more seamless experience for human users, reducing friction and improving conversions. Plus it effectively detects and blocks bots, preventing them from submitting spam messages through your contact form.

Use Custom CAPTCHA

A custom CAPTCHA allows you to create your own unique challenges for users to complete, rather than relying on predefined options from services like reCAPTCHA. This can provide an extra layer of protection and potentially deter more sophisticated spam bots.

Common types of custom CAPTCHA challenges include:

• Math Problems: Ask users to solve simple math equations.
• Image Identification: Present users with distorted images or letters and ask them to identify them.
• Audio Verification: Play an audio clip and ask users to type or select the correct answer.
• Word Puzzles: Present users with a word puzzle or anagram to solve.

How to Stop WordPress Contact Form Spam with Custom CAPTCHA?

Again, let’s say you are using WPForms for the contact form functionality on your WordPress website. In that case, you can install an Addon for custom CAPTCHA.

After the installation, you will see a “Custom Captcha” option in the “Add Fields” section. The custom captcha, by default, will be a simple math equation.

But you can choose from other options like Q&A, image identification, audio verification, and word puzzles.

Having these custom captchas will help stave off WordPress contact form spam.

Prevent Spam Bots

Spam bots are automated programs designed to send unsolicited messages, often in large quantities. They can target contact forms, comment sections, and other areas of your website to spam users or collect email addresses.

These bots automatically fill out contact forms or leave comments without human intervention. They can submit multiple messages in a short period, overwhelming your website’s systems. Some spam bots can adapt to security measures, making it challenging to detect and block them.

How to Prevent Spam Bots on WordPress Contact Forms?

Here are a few strategies for preventing spam bots:

• Set a maximum number of submissions: Restrict the number of times a form can be submitted within a specific time period.
• Use rate limiting: Slow down the rate at which forms can be submitted, making it more difficult for bots to send large numbers of messages quickly.
• Prevent bots from bypassing your website’s pages: Ensure that users must go through your website’s pages to access the contact form. That makes it harder for bots to directly submit messages.
• Human verification: CAPTCHA challenges and honeypot fields can help distinguish between human users and bots. For more details, refer to the previous sections.
• Identify and block: Keep track of IP addresses that are sending spam and block them from accessing your website. Many plugins and security solutions can help you with this.
• Security patches: Regularly update your WordPress plugins and themes to ensure they have the latest security patches and vulnerabilities are addressed.
• Enhanced protection: Install security plugins that offer features like firewall protection, intrusion detection, and malware scanning to help prevent spam and other attacks.
• Restrict comments: If your website has a comment section, consider limiting commenting to registered users or requiring approval for all comments. This can help reduce spam.
• Watch for unusual activity: Keep an eye out for sudden spikes in traffic, unusual comments, or other suspicious activity that may indicate a spam attack.

With these strategies, you can significantly reduce the amount of spam that targets your WordPress website and protect your users from unwanted messages.

Block Spam IP Addresses

Spam IP addresses are the internet addresses associated with devices or networks that are known to send spam messages. By blocking these IP addresses, you can prevent spammers from reaching your contact form and submitting unwanted messages.

Before blocking the spam IP addresses, you need to identify them. For that, you can:

• Review Your Server Logs: Check your server logs for IP addresses that are sending frequent or unusual requests.
• Monitor Contact Form Submissions: Pay attention to the IP addresses associated with spam submissions.
• Use Anti-spam Plugins: Many anti-spam plugins can help identify spam IP addresses based on various factors, such as the frequency of submissions, the content of the messages, and the IP address’s reputation.

Let’s say that you have managed to identify the IPs that are spamming the contact form on your WordPress website. So how do you block them?

How to Block IPs for Stopping WordPress Contact Form Spams?

There are a few ways to block the spam IP addresses:

• .htaccess file: If you have access to your website’s .htaccess file, you can add rules to block specific IP addresses or ranges of IP addresses. For example, you could add a line like this to block a specific IP address:

Deny from 123.45.67.89

• Server configuration: If you have direct access to your server’s configuration, you can block IP addresses at the server level.
• Use a Firewall Plugin: Many firewall plugins offer features to block IP addresses based on various criteria, such as frequency of submissions or known spam patterns.
• Leverage Anti-Spam Plugins: Anti-spam plugins often include tools to automatically identify and block spam IP addresses based on their behavior and reputation. One of the best plugins to use is Antispam Bee.

While blocking spam IP addresses can be effective, be careful not to block legitimate users accidentally. Regularly review your blocked IP address list and remove any legitimate addresses that may have been mistakenly blocked.

You can also consider using a combination of manual blocking, firewall rules, and anti-spam plugins for the best results.

Block Copy/Paste Actions in Your Forms

Copy/paste actions may be used by spam bots to quickly fill out contact forms with pre-generated data. By disabling this functionality, you can make it more difficult for bots to automate the process and reduce the volume of spam messages you receive.

Bots can use copy/paste to quickly fill out forms with pre-written spam messages. That allows them to send large numbers of messages in a short period. Spammers can collect email addresses and other personal info from your site’s visitors.

If the copy/paste action is enabled, it makes it easier for the spammers to automate their activities resulting in an immediate increase.

How to Block Copy/Paste Actions and Stop WordPress Contact Form Spams?

There are two ways to block the copy/paste actions in your WordPress contact forms.

• Use a JavaScript-based Solution: You can use JavaScript to disable the right-click context menu, which is often used for copy/paste operations. It also lets you prevent users from selecting text within your form fields, making it impossible to copy and paste.

document.addEventListener('contextmenu', event => event.preventDefault());
document.addEventListener('selectstart', event => event.preventDefault());

• Leverage a WordPress Plugin: Many anti-spam plugins offer features to disable copy/paste actions within your contact forms. Some plugins may allow you to integrate custom JavaScript code to achieve this functionality.

Make sure you are using copy/paste blocking in tandem with other spam countermeasures like reCAPTCHA, honeypot fields, and IP-blocking.

While blocking copy/paste can help prevent spam, it may also inconvenience legitimate users who rely on these features. Consider the trade-off between security and usability.

Implement Honeypot Antispam Method

In the Honeypot Antispam method, a hidden field is added to your contact form, typically with a name that is not relevant to the form’s purpose. This field is designed to be invisible to human users, but bots may automatically fill it out.

If the hidden field is filled out when a form submission is received, it’s a sign that the submission is likely spam. The form can then be rejected or flagged for further review.

How to Implement the Honeypot Method to Stop WordPress Contact Form Spam?

Here’s how you stop contact form spam through Honeypot method:

Step 1: Use HTML to add a hidden field to your contact form. The field should have a name that is not used by any other fields in the form. For example:

<input type="text" name="honeypot" style="display: none;" />

Step 2: On the server-side, check if the honeypot field contains any data. If it does, the submission is likely spam.

Some anti-spam plugins offer built-in honeypot functionality. So you can simply install and activate the plugins and stop the WordPress contact form spam through this method easily.

FAQs on WordPress Contact Form Spam

Let’s Protect Your WordPress Website From Contact Form Spam

Contact form spam can be a frustrating and time-consuming issue for WordPress website owners. By implementing the best strategies, you can significantly reduce the amount of spam that targets your website and protect your users from unwanted messages.

1. Use a combination of methods: Consider using multiple anti-spam techniques to provide the strongest protection.
2. Stay updated: Keep up-to-date with the latest spam trends and adjust your anti-spam measures accordingly.
3. Monitor and adjust: Regularly review your anti-spam settings and make adjustments as needed.
4. Consider professional help: If you’re struggling to combat spam, consult with a WordPress security expert.

So, need help with stopping WordPress contact form spam? Then hire the services of our WordPress professionals today!