Anti-Spam

Over the last couple of weeks, I’d started receiving a significant (well, more than previously) amount of spam through the contact form on one of my sites. (the photography one, not that anyone cares)

As a result, I added in a small dollop of anti-spam input on the form – I’ve done this on several forms over the years, and it’s never caused me any problems. It’s probably now only about ten to twenty minutes work (including testing the entire thing) so it’s no hassle – and every time I wonder why I didn’t just put the damn thing in place when I created the original, rather than slamming it in as an afterthought.

In short, I just never remember. And in some cases that’s fine – some forms just never seem to get hit in the first place, whereas others pop up fairly quickly and get hit by spammers. It’s all very odd.

I know I should just put it in with anti-spam by default. It’s just I never remember.

Then again, on one particular form I did for a client, I added in a whole bundle of anti-spam features including the ability to ‘blacklist’ the IP and poster-name/email automatically by clicking on a link in the forwarded message – and that client never makes use of the features. I know for a fact that they get a whole bundle of spam through it – and I do on occasion run through and block a whole load of the IPs for them myself – but it seems equally bizarre for people to not even make use of the tools they’ve been given.