When Real Enquiries Get Buried in Spam
You set up a contact form on your website, but instead of genuine customer enquiries you're getting flooded with dodgy ads and bot spam. Sifting through dozens of spam messages a day makes it easy to miss the real enquiries that matter. It's a common headache for Korean-run businesses in Australia — but the good news is that a few simple measures can stop most of it.
Why Spam Comes In
Most form spam isn't sent by a real person — it's automated programs (bots) crawling the web and randomly filling in contact forms. If your form is exposed with no protection, bots will hammer it around the clock, so the spam just keeps piling up.
Effective Ways to Block Spam
- Install reCAPTCHA / hCaptcha: Google's reCAPTCHA v3 quietly filters out bots in the background without asking your customers to click anything. Since it doesn't hurt the user experience, it's the most recommended option.
- Honeypot field: A hidden 'trap' field that's invisible to people but gets filled in by bots. If that field has a value, the submission is automatically treated as spam. It's free and causes no inconvenience for customers.
- Required fields & format validation: Checking email format, phone number length and so on filters out a lot of junk entries.
- Submission speed limits: If a form is submitted within 1–2 seconds of loading, it's likely not a human, so you can block it.
The Benefits of Stopping Spam
With less spam, you can spot and respond to genuine enquiries quickly. It also reduces server load and the time spent cleaning out your inbox — and most importantly, you stop missing enquiries that could turn into sales.
At PICKTECH, we apply reCAPTCHA and honeypot protection by default when building your website, giving you a clean, spam-free enquiry experience. If form spam is doing your head in, feel free to get in touch.