Spam Protection for your Website
A few months ago my spam began increasing. Like popcorn, it began with a few strange messages and over time became a torrent of garbage. It was coming to some email addresses/links that were on my website forms. The fact that for years spambots have been harvesting email addresses that are posted on websites was well known to me. All of our sites use special computer code to hide email addresses from the spambots. I've been doing that for years. But this last wave of spam was different. It was coming from my contact forms. The form fields were identified and filled with junk. It's called directory harvesting.
After much research I discovered that the spammers had discovered a way to exploit web forms. These exploits weren't selling anything. They just filled my mailbox with gobbledygook. More than a prank, this appears to be an effort to bring down the Internet by overloading it (and its users) with spam traffic. Spambots scour the web looking for things they can exploit. When they find something, they automatically test it. If it is a legitimate email address, they begin bombarding it with random text of one sort or another. They can use your website to send email, not just to you, which they do, but to other addresses as well. And it appears that the email recipients are receiving email from your site. Unfortunately, the web has grown incredibly caustic in a lot of ways.
As spammers find new and creative ways to exploit the Internet, antispammers work to protect it. I did find a way to keep web forms from exploitation, but it adds a level of complexity and time to the work of website design. But I'm glad to do it because I hate spam and what spammers are doing to the promise of the Internet.
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