How to Stop Spam Emails Invading Your Business’ Inbox

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Your beautiful new website has been thoughtfully designed to attract leads and entice customers to buy your products or contact you about your services. While your website may be attracting potential new clients, it could also be attracting scammers and spambots.

If you are getting frustrated by the number of spam emails making their way into your business’ inbox, there are extra steps that can be taken to make your website’s contact form more secure.

Some of these tips can be applied by you, but Digital Pie is always happy to help.

Add a layer of protection with reCAPTCHA

Google reCAPTCHA is designed to detect suspicious activity on websites, confirming visitors are humans using simple puzzles.

You have probably come across versions of reCAPTCHA before. Maybe you have checked a box on a website that says, “I’m not a robot” or selected all the images within a photo grid that include a vehicle.

As a client of Digital Pie, you have access to a stack of premium paid plugins. This includes WPForms Pro. As a default, WPForms has its own anti-spam filter, but reCAPTCHA adds another layer of protection.

There are different versions of reCAPTCHA, and some may suit your site better than others. Version 2 is the most popular option among our clients, while version 3, which works behind the scenes to detect abusive traffic, is becoming increasingly popular.

To add or change reCAPTCHA on your site, you can go to the WPForms settings in WordPress and select the method you would like to use. You will then add your site details on the reCAPTCHA website, where you will generate secret site keys. Finally, these keys will be added to the WPForms settings.

recaptcha version 2

Deny emails from particular email addresses

Sometimes spam emails are coming from real people who make it past reCAPTCHA. Salespeople and scammers may manually submit forms to reach your inbox.

WPForms allows you to easily add particular email addresses to a denylist.

wpform email not allowed

To block a particular email address, go to WPForms in the WordPress dashboard. Find the form you want to add a denylist to, then click edit. In the advanced options, you can set up a list of blocked email addresses. You can also export your incoming mail list to easily examine it and make changes in a spreadsheet.

After you have made these changes to your form, it is best practice to test the list is working by trying to submit a form on your website with one of the blocked email addresses. You should see an error message if the address is successfully blocked.

wpforms email denylist

Block particular words or company names

Have you noticed spam messages you are receiving have things in common? Maybe a particular company name is coming up regularly, or a certain domain or keyword.

Well, certain keywords can be blocked. But use this option carefully, as every submission containing a blocked keyword will be denied, so you could risk blocking legitimate messages.

As changes will need to be made to coding to block specific words, we also highly recommend a professional website developer implements these changes for you, but here is an example of adding the snippet to block profanity.

There are a few effective steps you can take to prevent spam emails from getting mixed up with genuine customer inquiries and leads.

Digital Pie can easily set up these three features on your website to block spam emails. It will only cost you half an hour of our time.

We recommend revisiting these steps every quarter until unwanted submissions are manageable.

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