Archive for December, 2007
Spammy Awards
We can’t resist publishing the story of a spammer, who yesterday ended up on a blog using
FormSmarts for their weblog comment facility.
After finding the blog on Google, the spammer confidently tried to submit an outrageously spammy message: FormSmarts form spam filter gave the comment a score of 739, where anything greater than 0 is considered to be spam. That is — and by far — the most spam-looking message we ever recorded.
FormSmarts would like to thank this spammer for this amusing moment.
Posted on December 28th, 2007 in form spam.
No Comments »
Tags: comment spam
Form Builder and Form Spam Filter Updated
A major FormSmarts upgrade was rolled out today. Changes include:
- New features in the form generator, like the ability to delete a field in a form
- A simplified user interface for generated web forms
- A major upgrade of the form spam protection engine
Posted on December 28th, 2007 in form spam.
No Comments »
Tags: form builder, upcoming, web forms
Protecting HTML Forms from Spam with JavaScript
If you are looking for a quick way to avoid automated form spam on existing forms, you may want to try this simple JavaScript form spam protection trick. You won’t get a level of form protection (and usability) comparable to what you would get with FormSmarts, but then you can implement the trick on any existing forms, irrespective of the form handler you are currently using.
We plan to offer the ability to use FormSmarts as a form spam filter for third-party forms within a few months. This will effectively allow users of other form processors to benefit from FormSmarts’ form spam protection on their existing HTML forms, with very little change. Details and availability will be advertised here.
Posted on December 25th, 2007 in form spam.
3 Comments »
Tags: comment spam, form spam
Form Builder Password Change Now Available
If you have forgotten you password, you may now change it without contacting FormSmarts Support.
Posted on December 19th, 2007 in form builder.
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Tags: upcoming
Creating a Simple Contact Form with FormSmarts: Watch the Video
If you are here wondering how long it would take you to build a fully functional contact form with FormSmarts, get the video from Youtube or Dailymotion.
It’s a user-contributed video (thanks Dan), so don’t expect professional making and voiceover. If you can do better, let us know.
Posted on December 16th, 2007 in HTML form.
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Tags: contact form, howto, video tutorial
Choosing a Good Web Form Title
Most visitors will notice that they are submitting a form not from your website, but from FormSmarts.com. For users to be confident they are sending information to the right person, include your name or website name in the form title.
For example, “Contact Edgar Poe” is a more informative and useful title than “Contact Form”.
Posted on December 15th, 2007 in form builder.
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Tags: howto, usability, web forms
How Did Comment-Spammers Find My Blog?
Did you ever wonder how comment spammers discovered your blog?
Crawling the Web
One possibility is that the spammer sent out a bot to crawl the web from blog to blog. This requires some infrastructure, and is becoming less effective as more bloggers use some kind of comment spam protection mechanism.
Searching Google
It then becomes more effective for the spammer to simply use Google,
searching for all the pages with the phrase post a comment, but without the terms sign in, register, log in, etc.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22post+a+comment%22
+-intext%3A%22login%22+-intext%3A%22log+in%22+-intext%3A%22register%22
+-intext%3A%22sign+in%22+-intext%3A%22signin%22+-intext%3A%22sign+up%22
+-intext%3A%22signup%22+-intext%3A%22logged+in
And as an additional benefit, blogs come already sorted by “importance” in the seach results.
Extending the query to restrict results to blogs not using Captchas is left as an exercise to the reader.
What This Means to You
Avoid standard phrases like post a comment on your blog. More creative phrases like Reply to this Post, share your views or letters to the editor may be safer.
Posted on December 12th, 2007 in form spam.
No Comments »
Tags: comment spam, form spam, form submission
