Over at OwnWebNow and ExchangeDefender we have forms that allow our customers to request a callback.. so instead of calling us and leaving a message or sending appointment requests they can just tell us when to call them.
Sounds good, right?
Well, over the past few months the amount of form SPAM has absolutely gone wild. I’ve initially hacked in the WordPress mechanism for blacklisting IP addresses.. then I tied in CAPTCHA.. then I tied in the ‘prove you are not a computer’ deal where I threw in a form input element and using CSS set it invisible – pretty neat, worked for about a month. But now they have broken through that as well..
My last step is to keep on rotating my hidden elements and timing the sessions to make sure they are not direct hits.
What I have found in common is that they all are just junk using a freemail address like yahoo, aol or hotmail. I have been junking them pretty rapidly but I suppose the reason I am writing this email is that I see a business model in the online form management. I talk to people every day that are having issues with ExchangeDefender and forms that end up in quarantines (later they apologize when they see that the form had a great stock tip in it instead of that part order) but there is a lot of demand for online data management and customers do not want to pay for a Sharepoint CAL… so, where is the middle?
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