Web form receiving mostly spam addresses

Max Classic
#1

We were using MailChimp and recently migrated to Infusion. With a visually similar opt in form our sign ups went up eight to tenfold more per week.

I was surprised, but of course happy. That was until we used the new addresses in a campaign and were warned of our high spam rate.

Upon review, clearly most of these new sign ups are spam etc. The first name field has things like “5a3c8babb862e” The form has captcha enabled. Not sure what the spammers are hoping to achieve unless it is targeting to damage email sending reputation

We never had this issue like this with our MailChimp sign up forms on the same site.

I spent a long, unsatisfying time last night on the support chat. The first chat disconnected after twenty minutes of typing and could not reconnect. After going over everything a second time, the solution offered was to have a web developer add a manual HTML form captcha that would ask the user to correctly answer a math question like what is 8+7 before allowing the form to submit.

This does not sound like a great user experience. I personally think twice about submitting any form that asks for much more than an email address. It also is frustrating that the much less expensive MailChimp sign up form process does not have the same spam problem.

I’m sure I’m not the only one targeted by this type of spam. What are others doing to prevent this, or is it an inherit problem with infusionsoft as my web guy is suggesting this morning?

How do you prevent webform spam
#2

I would like to stop the spam also. We are receiving about 2 per hour from our forms that are embedded in a WordPress site. We are using Invisible Recaptcha. We even tried using jQuery Validation to make sure first name didn’t contain any numbers. In addition to data like “5a3c8babb862e” we also get things like first name “Joe Smith”, last name “Joe Smith” and phone “Joe Smith”.
The bots still found ways around it, including using the url of the form directly.
We’re back to using Invisible Recaptcha, and still receiving form spam.
I’ve been on chat three times and still no resolution other than to periodically clean out the spam contacts.

1 Like
#3

We also are using the Infusion invisible reCaptcha, on a Twitter Bootstrap 3 based site.

The thing that confuses me is that we were not receiving fake sign ups when we had the MailChimp subscribe form. It looks like 90-92% of the sign ups we received on the Infusion subscribe form are fake.

If our site is being targeted specifically, then I would have expected this to be a consistent problem regardless of what form was being used.

#4

Hi @Tim_Ballering,

I very much doubt your site has been targeted (though it is of course on possibility you shouldn’t dismiss). I’ve actually been looking into this myself. Both to find an origin and a solution. While spam bots are created using many methods to get around spam prevention, it seems everytime IS changes it’s approach to preventing spam, spam bots are created to circumvent that. Meaning specifically to circumvent IS forms. There are a number of use in the community working on some more ‘creative’ approaches to handling this…stay tuned.

#5

I have the same problem! Why is this not a massive IS priority?

#6

Right, I have a fix. Kind of. It is a step in the right direction.

IS said:

Create an action set that applies a tag. Something unique like “Spam contact.” Then, check the box to only run the action when certain rules are met. You can then create a rule for if the contacts name starts with “5”

Then, they can have that action set to run when the form is submitted. Then, they can periodically remove/opt-out the contacts with that tag. I’d probably add the same rule to the actions that they’re running in their follow-up sequence.

Does anyone know how to use a tag to opt people out automatically?

#7

We use PlusThis’s Automatic Unsubscribe feature to do this, @Alastair_Sanderson1.

#8

Hi Cheryl,

Thanks so much for this. It is an option. But I am loathed to pay $79 per month just to stop spam which is something I feel IS should do…

I have also, managed to build a what I am calling a spam trap.

Once I have tagged them, I use this tag in a decision diamond to ensure that they are not sent anything ever.

#9

@Alastair_Sanderson1, yes there are lots of ways to deal with this. The PlusThis function doesn’t stop spam. You had asked about a way to automatically opt them out (unsubscribe.) There are no native functions that will automatically do that but what you described is a very good manual method :slight_smile:

No, paying $79/mo for only one function isn’t a good idea. Although if it saves you from paying someone $79/mo to do manual work or prevent you from making more with your time, then it may be worth it. It’s all relative to what time costs you.

#10

Same issue and it’s now April 2019. Also I have a Mailchimp form on another site with NO issues. If Infusionsoft put half the effort into improving their product as they do in their marketing and branding I may stay but they ignore essentials like people getting more spam sign ups that legit. It’s a nightmare to remove them.

#11

@Jayne_Stevenson,

While Infusionsoft has a few things that they have control over, there are easily 30 times more conditions that happen outside of IS and while you may not be getting issues with Mailchimp, they are absolutely every bit as much affected overall. There are literally thousands of conditions and rules that affect this and very few of them are controlled by the sending service. Every service is every bit affected especially lately due to gmail/yahoo drastically affecting what emails addresses are actually active. It’s completely affecting everyone on every service.

#12

Totally agree - Never had any issues with any other CRM or forms we have used before in regards to Spam.
Signing up with Infusionsoft has been the worst experience I have ever had in my life. Complete lies from the sales team to get you to sign up, and nothing but frustration ever since.

Infusionsoft you need to do something about your Spam issues - we should not have to pay another program to have their forms on our websites then also pay Zapier just to get rid of them spam issue