We have a major problem within our app wherein spam contacts are filling forms and getting through. I was able to tackle the spam contacts that INF applies the 5a29382938723 etc numbers to.
However, there is another common case, a few/day wherein the First Name and Last Name are identical, and the contact is SPAM. I’ve researched this and am 100% sure.
For example, the contact’s name would appear as (firstName) Maxwell Lovitt (lastName) Maxwell Lovitt. And the email appears nothing like the name.
SO, the question is, is there a character or code I can use within the search criteria to bring up ALL contacts with IDENTICAL first/last names? That way I could create an action set that prevents these contacts from entering a sequence after filling a form. I know there are characters such as “_” (nothing in the field) and “%” (anything in the field) that accomplish goals in the search criteria.
I can’t think of a way. What I would do is export all of your contacts and fix it in Excel using the duplicate function. Once you’ve flagged all contacts with a duplicate first name/last name, sort them and delete all the other contacts. Then add a new column header “Tag” and fill that column with a tag name “Duplicate” (or whatever you want) Then re-import them and you’ll be able to find them with the tag you created. When you re-import them, only import the contact id and the tag. Then, you can just search by that tag and delete them. This doesn’t solve the problem moving forward. I’m not sure how that could be managed without some javascript trickery.
This is a huge issue for us as well. Tons of spam with same first name/last name. I would love a way to be able to search using matching name fields as a parameter!
Names starting with numeric digit like “5” or same first name and last name, though these represents majority of the spam submissions, about 80%, the other 20% are hard to identify once they are in your list. Sending emails to those submissions will result in higher spam report rate.
It is possible to identify these signups before they enter your list. Since they are filled up by bots (automated computer programs), their method/signature is different from humans. But once they are in the list, there is no real differentiation to tell them apart.
If you are using webforms, SpamKill (http://spamkill.ideasquarelab.com) can block every kind of spam bot submissions, does not matter whether it has same first/last name or not.