Prevent php web contact form spam

Question

I am an amateur web designer, I have searched on stackoverflow.com and other websites and have found many fixes for this issue I\'m having, but none of them have worked (probabl

Answer 1

I have another method which I have used successfully on several web sites for over ten years, without so much as a single successful spam robot attack. I know from the server logs that the forms are spammed hundreds of times per day, but none of it has gotten through to me. This method doesn't need Captcha or any other purchased software. I will try not to give all the details here, but I'll say enough that most people can implement it. First, you will need a simple text-based graphic which shows an anti-spam "code' and, critically, the prompt for the form field with which it is used. Second, you will need an email script which will accept aliases (e.g. FormMail and many others). Create on your form a required field with the name of "recipient" (or whatever field name to which your email script expects to send the form input). Display your "code" graphic, with the embedded prompt next to it. Make sure that you set up your email script to accept whatever code you have used in the graphic as the alias for the real email recipient (you). When this is implemented, a human can easily read and enter the code you have chosen in your graphic (i.e. the email alias set up in the email script). A spam robot sees only a blank field. If the robot chooses to fill that field randomly, it will generate an error in the email script saying, in effect, that the recipient doesn't exist. You never see that error, nor do you ever get any spam. I have tried most of the other approaches described in other posts here, but none has been 100% effective as this one has been. Of course, a human being can defeat this, but if he does you simply change the graphic and the email alias in your script setup. Then, he must start over with a manual submission.