Form Spam Protection That Fights Bots, Not People
WebsiteSpam.com is a project dedicated to the non-intrusive identification of automated form spam and form injection. We make bots work harder, not people.
Stop making your visitors work harder!
If you are using Captcha-ish tactics to protect against form spam, you are making people work harder. Before you consider making someone type out the answer to a math equation or type out the text that appears on an image, consider that you can make bots work harder instead of people. The implementation of the service is completely transparent to website visitors.
How It Works
Well, let's start with why it works. The chairs of WebsiteSpam.com represent development firms, which represent a broad base of clients who have agreed to participate in a study to help identify form spam. After almost a decade in the making, our unique pool of data was ready to be put to work.
Regarding logistics, your visitor's form data is sent to our system for analysis. The data is passed through a series of predefined and heuristic tests that help us identify current trends. The system then replies back with a response code in three colon delimited sets of numbers. This response code is read by your web server.
So what do you do with this information? Anything you want to do with it. If the probability of SPAM is high, change the recipient to bad@yourspamplaguedwebsite.com or don't deliver it at all. If the score is low, send the form submission to good@youroncespamplaguedwebsiteisnowsafe.com. If the test isn't effective enough for your liking (based on Section 2 above), modify your form to send us the right data. The nature of the system allows it to be highly configurable, which allows you to set parameters applicable to your specific needs.
Requirements
-Decent programming skills. If you are still "coding" websites primarily in Dreamweaver's design view, this project isn't for you. However, WYSISWG'ers aren't alone and we can still help you. Ask us about hiring a qualified developer and we will recommend a qualified developer for you.
-You can use any web server or programming language. Upon issuance of your API Key, we will provide an example implementation for you based on your preferred programming language.
-A fully qualified domain name. The system will not work with websites that are solely accessible by an internet protocol address.
Sign-Up
Use of our services is free - until when and if the volume of queries requires subsidizing. For this reason, we are providing free API Keys for as long as we can. Your contribution to the data pool is currently more valuable than your monetary contribution. We can either email or send your API Key via a form on your website after we can prove that you aren't a spammer. If you are hesitant to give us your email address, we understand. However, if you don't provide a valid email address during the registration process, be prepared to watch for us to connect with you via a form on your website.
A Note on Privacy
We store the characteristics of your data only, not entire form submissions. We don't care what your form submissions say, nor do we care to allocate the resources for a database of that scale. Stored data is read only by machines that exectute our algorithms. The volume of data is too large to be read by any person.
You are here because your privacy was violated when unsolicited advertisements came through your online form and landed in your email inbox. This project is the result of a cooperative effort to stop unauthorized use of your forms. If you want to put a stop to form spam, you are going to have to tell us a little bit about how your forms are used.