I operate a number of websites, including this one. One of the persistent problems that I’ve run across in website management is stopping web form spam. Automated bots continually attack websites. They try to log in, they try to comment on comment boxes, they try to submit fictitious orders. Most people don’t realize how prevalent this form of spam is, but it is out of control.
You look at your site and you see you have a new comment! Woohoo, someone reached out to you. Then you read it and it says something to the effect of:
{In my opinion|Personally|In my view}, if all {webmasters|site owners|website owners|web owners} and bloggers made
good content as you did, the {internet|net|web} will be {much more|a
lot more} useful than ever before.|
I {couldn’t|could not} {resist|refrain from} commenting.
If you use WordPress (the blog software that I use), you are probably familiar with Askimet, which is loaded by default. It works well, but it really only works on stopping spam on comment forms. I have been looking for a solution that stops spam on forums, login pages, etc. I think I have finally found the solution. It is called Cleantalk.
Cleantalk is a plugin/service that filters out and blocks all sorts of spam from hitting any form on your site. So far across the websites that I maintain, it is blocked over 20,000 spam attempts. That is for the past six months.
[Tweet “Thousands of Spam attacks were blocked with Cleantalk!”]
I’m really impressed with the depth and breadth of the program. It filters spam across a number of platforms, including WordPress, PHPbb, vBulletin, Joomla and others.
Cleantalk Spam Protection Benefits
The key features of Cleantalk are:
- It is invisible to site visitors
- It is reliable
- It provides statistics
- It provides protection to all data collection points, including comments, registration, feedback, and contact us forms
- It is really easy to use
- They have great tech support! (my experience is that it is fast and efficient)
- It is cost effective
- It saves you time!
A newer feature now included is a option allows you to filter spam bots before they access your website. The benefit here is that having fewer hits from spambots reduces your host’s CPU usage thus accelerating pages load time.
Begin stopping web form spam
If you are managing a website on any of the platforms I mentioned above and you want to find a tool that is effective in stopping web form spam, it would be worth your while to check out the Cleantalk anti-spam plugin to reduce the headaches caused by webspam.