Spam is perhaps one of the most hated terms on the internet, and this is not surprising, considering how many people lose hours of work each day in an effort to prevent and eliminate spam form their inboxes and web sites. Conventional email spam is bad enough, however there is another type of spam that is even more annoying – web hosting spam. This type of spam usually plagues your web site in the form of user comments, repetitive user posts, and an overwhelming amount of junk emails via your site’s “contact us” form. Unfortunately, this type of spam is much more difficult to prevent than conventional email spam, which can be combated with a simple spam folder and a blacklist. The following tips can help you overcome web hosting spam and keep your web site free from this type of spam.
Preventing Spam Comments
There are many webmasters that will attempt to build backlinks to their web site by leaving spam comments on your pages automatically with the help of automated software. To prevent such spam attacks you will need to make sure you are actively monitoring your site comments, as well as utilizing anti-spam tools within your web hosting control panel. All modern web hosting accounts have anti-spam utilities such as Spam Hammer that will let you set filters and prevent comments that may be easily identified as spam. For example, you can create a filter to prevent comments form containing links, which would greatly eliminate spam by discouraging spammers form leaving links on your site.
Securing Contact Forms
Some spammers will spam your web site’s contact form, sending automated emails repeatedly to overload your inbox and make your job as a webmaster difficult. This is often done by the competition, so it is very important to make sure measures are taken to prevent such spam attacks as quickly as possible, especially if you have an eCommerce site or a site that advertises your services, as you will need to be able to respond to customer and client inquiries. Fortunately, you can set filters and limits within your web hosting control panel that will keep a single IP address form sending too many emails in a row. This will greatly reduce the amount of spam emails you’ll receive.
Using Captcha Images
One of the best ways to deter spammers is through the use of Captcha forms that will prevent spammers from using automated software to attack your web site with spam. Captcha forms are basically images that contain letters and numbers that are difficult to read, and nearly impossible for a software to decipher. Thus, using Captcha forms on your web site will greatly reduce the amount of automated spam on your web site. Since spammers will no longer be able to use automated bots to fill in forms, create user accounts, and post content on your site, you will be eliminating the majority of web hosting spam.
