Webform spam, a prevalent issue online, occurs when spam programs or humans inundate webforms with unwanted submissions. To counter bot spam, adding a “ReCaptcha” field into your gravity form can help (check under the Advanced Fields section in the form editor.) The ReCaptcha field adds a checkbox prompting users to confirm, “I am not a robot,” which bots cannot fulfill due to the underlying technology. However, human spammers can still bypass this, and there could be some advanced bots that get passed ReCaptcha. To further strengthen your anti-spam capabilities, try incorporating a simple question into the form —a challenge question most people can easily answer, but deters spammers or advanced bots. Implementing “conditional logic” for the submit button ensures it only appears after users correctly answer the question.
In summary, combating webform spam involves a two-fold approach: using ReCaptcha to deter bots and incorporating simple questions to challenge human spammers, safeguarding the integrity of online forms.
If you’re continuing to receive a lot of spam emails (some should be expected), please ensure that the ReCaptcha field is added to your form, and consider adding a new challenge question. If you need further assistance, contact us at webservices@ahc.ufl.edu.
Web Services has updated the public website network to better block unwanted automated traffic and reduce spam submissions through webforms.
A new software firewall will now block “bot” traffic that can overload our website servers and slow down website performance. Additionally, we’ve updated the reCAPTCHA fields on all webforms. These fields will automatically be added to new forms. If your forms already have a captcha, you need to remove it to avoid having two captchas on the same form, which could be confusing for users.
What you need to do:
- Edit your web forms and remove the existing “Recaptcha” field.
- Save your form. The updated captcha will be automatically applied, even though you won’t see it in the editor.
Please note that with this update, some form submissions might be mistakenly filtered into the spam list on the website’s back end. Periodically check the “spam” section at the top of your form entries list to ensure no legitimate submissions were marked as spam.