Technology Advisor Blog

You've got mail!  You see the notification - someone just filled out your website's contact form.  Your heart skips.  Could it be a new client?  As soon as you read the inquiry, your smile begins to fade as you realize it's just another bot selling you something (or worse!).

Whether it's your email or website, contact forms are a vital part to any form of communication. It’s a great opportunity for potential leads and clients to get into contact to ask questions, get to know your business, and request products and services. While it is great to have an outlet for communication for existing and potential clients, spam messages aren’t too far behind. When spam messages begin to flood your inbox with messages that are irrelevant, contain bots and even posing security risks, it makes guiding through contact form submissions a time consuming effort. Contact form spam can cost you and your business time, security and potentially missed opportunities.

In this blog post, we’ll dive into what contact form spam is, why it happens, and how you can stop it in its tracks.

What Is Contact Form Spam?

Contact form spam occurs when bots and people fill out and submit web forms with irrelevant or malicious content. These messages can consist of but are not limited to messages involving a sense of urgency, poor grammar/punctuation, promotional links, or even malicious malware messages. While these are some examples of contact form spam on websites with public domains like SquareSpace, GoDaddy, WordPress, HubSpot, Shopify, etc, these also can appear across your DMs on multiple social media platforms.

Some examples you or friends may have come across include:

• Links to unrelated websites or adult content
• Fake product inquiries or job applications
• Messages with random characters or foreign languages
• Phishing attempts posing as legitimate inquiries.
  

Spam Threats Extend to Social Media

It’s not just your contact form that’s vulnerable. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Google Business Profiles can be targets for spam and scams and small businesses are often hit with the most impact.

Social media accounts will end up in your ‘Hidden Messages’ with language such as:

• If you ignore their first message, they will try to trick you again by sending a follow up that usually emails “Hello, are you there?” or “I’m sorry, did I reach you at a bad time?” To give some feel of a human interaction even though it likely is not the case.
• Scammers will impersonate as older folks saying their “grandchild” was interested in their product or services. Then mention the only payment method is by check, which is a big red flag.
• Saying they are an ‘existing’ customer and that it Is urgent to respond back quickly with their submission.
• Outside of DM messaging, scammers also leave fake comments that promote crypto, NSFW content, or suspicious pages to lure you in.
• Tagged spam posts that are unrelated to you and your business.
  
  

It is important to also consider these spam messaging tactics are likely to be automated, as they send mass copy and pastes of the same messaging. At times they won’t have any relevance to you or your own products and services. This can be an inconvenience, especially having to sift through multiple messages to figure out which is potential versus spam.

Why It Matters:

• If a potential customer sees spam under your Instagram post, it can turn them off instantly. For your business to grow, you must show transparency and trust in what you have to offer consumers.
• If your paid content is hijacked by bots, you’re paying for exposure that could harm your brand.
• Repeated spam or misleading content can get your page shadow-banned or flagged, reducing your organic reach.

Why Do Contact Forms on Websites Attract Unwanted Spam Messaging?

Like your website showcasing your products and services, contact forms are also public, accessible, and often function without the protection for safer internet access. As an effect, these forms can make your website/business an easy target for spammers to reach out with the intent on wasting your businesses time and resources.
In normal scenarios where you have the proper cybersecurity awareness training, these tricks appear obvious. However, they can gather their information about you through social media and sometimes cater to what you are looking for to let down your guard. Adding to the rising use of AI, they can be very convincing.

Here’s why they’re appealing to scammers:

• Automated bots scan websites to find form fields to exploit.
• No CAPTCHA or weak validation means free entry.
• Incentives like backlinks or phishing opportunities attract bad actors.

For Small Businesses, These Cause Major Problems

1. Poor Use of a Businesses’ Resources

While larger companies likely have the resources to handle sifting through spam and other web leads, small businesses usually don’t. You might be the one designated in responding to every inquiry, and reviewing through 20 spam messages in a day is a massive constraint on your daily tasks and deadlines.

2. Lost Opportunities

A real customer message can easily get buried under spam. If you miss it, that’s a lost sale, booking, or collaboration. When you’re working hard to build every lead, losing even one can have a measurable impact on revenue.

3. Brand Credibility Becomes Impacted

Imagine a potential client receives a confirmation email with spam links, or your CRM gets filled with junk entries. It reflects poorly on your brand and its professionalism, even if it’s not your fault. Reputation is everything for small businesses.

4. Strained Vigilance on Security Vulnerabilities Some contact form spam contains malware, phishing links, or attempts to exploit site weaknesses. Small business websites are often under protected, making them prime targets for cyberattacks via form entries.

Protection of Personal and Work Email

While Ekaru concentrates on protecting your email security and taking action against bad actors, we also implement impersonation protection, gateway security, and cybersecurity awareness training for our clients along with anyone that looks to implement stronger defenses for their business. As bots and attacks get more advanced, it's important to know that sometimes those get through email filtering in pace due to complexity and sophistication. Its smart to go beyond just basic filters. Fortunately, your webmaster's following recommendations will help significantly reduce contact form spam by implementing:

1. CAPTCHA: (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a security mechanism that requires users to complete a task. Such as identifying objects in images and or checking a box, to prove they’re human, as bots usually can’t solve these tasks. Aside from CAPTCHAs, there is a far more advanced version known as reCAPTCHA on Google that can track a user's behavior through mouse movements to identify the likelihood of a bot without much interaction. Using a CAPTCHA on your website will help decrease bot traffic, improving form security, and reducing malicious submissions from going through.

A spammers approach consists of using fake email addresses in the hopes to pass through. Requiring verification ensures that only real, reachable users can complete the submission process ensuring data accuracy.
A further layer is to recognize key words, patterns spam actors have used in the past to set rules flag and block before reaching any of your inboxes. 

While you have taken the correct steps in protecting your email and contact forms, monitoring is still as important as ever for the ever-evolving nature of cybersecurity. Check your form submissions regularly, check for updates, keep your plugins updated, and adjust filters based on new threats. 

Use Experience As An Educational Awareness Opportunity

While it may be challenging to prevent all types of spam from filtering its way into your inbox, you can view this as an opportunity to educate others with your own personal experience and how it was handled transparently and professionally. Ways you can showcase this online or on social media:

• Create an Instagram or Facebook post educating your audience on how you’re keeping their data safe. Of course, not with real life samples to protect users privacy, but still providing a visual example.
• Write a short blog post or LinkedIn article on spam awareness for other local businesses (that’s what we are doing here!).

Not only does this establish you as trustworthy, it boosts engagement and positions your brand as tech-savvy and security-conscious.

Final Thoughts

For small businesses, contact form spam isn’t just annoying, it’s a hidden cost. It steals time, hurts customer experience, and can even affect your bottom line. By understanding the threats and taking proactive steps on both your website and social platforms, you protect your business and your brand.

While contact form spam is a nuisance, it doesn’t have to be your daily headache. With the right combination of tools and best practices, you can maintain a clean and secure communication channel, we will make sure you hear from the people who matter.
Want help implementing email protection from spam? Reach out, we’re real people behind this form, and we’d love to help (no bots allowed).

Schedule a call with us today at 978-692-4200 or www.ekaru.com/contact-us.