Use Case: Reducing Form Bot Submissions

Description

Here a some steps you can take to reduce the number of recurring bot submissions to your Sugar Market form or external lead form.

Steps to Complete

The following are just a few methods you can use to help identify and prevent form bot submissions:

Add reCaptcha

• If you are using a Sugar Market form, add the reCaptcha field in the Build step.
• If you are running an external lead form, then ask your web designer to implement a reCaptcha field on your page.

Change the Form Code

Sometimes bot submissions obtain access to your form and will constantly submit submissions no matter what is done. By creating a brand new form or republishing the form, the attackers will not have access to the new code initially.

Change the Form Location

Similar to the previous recommendation, if your form is on your website, then changing the URL to a new URL could throw the bots off from the spam results. Example: If your form is hosted on www.mywebsite.com/contact-us then try changing the form location to www.mywebsite.com/contact-us-2.

Apply a Double Opt-in Strategy

If you are using a Sugar Market form, enable Double Opt-In in the Setup step. While this will not prevent bot submissions, it is not only a good practice, but those who complete a double opt in are most likely a human submission.

Form Validation (non-Sugar Market forms)

If you are using an external form connector to pass the data to Sugar Market, having a web developer add some type of validation upon submission can prevent bots from being captured and sent to Sugar Market. There are a variety of ways to do this and the code can be simple or more complex. An internet search can provide more examples if it is something you want to explore further. While Sugar Market forms are limited in preventing bot submissions, this method has proven to work for our clients.

Other methods for reducing form bot submissions include looking for legitimate email address syntax, only accepting submissions from current regions, and preventing multiple submissions from the same IP address or sessions.