Spammers are really, really stupid

I get the occasional bit of spam via the comments on this site. However, all have to be authorised by myself so I don’t allow any thorough. I’ve now added reCaptcha to the comments section and added a personal message stating that nothing will be displayed if it’s spam. Never-the-less I still get it. Now, reCaptcha is rather good and I can’t believe they’ve found an automated way of getting around it ( I use it on the BMTG site and it isn’t bypassed). If that’s the case, they’re typing things in manually, surely knowing nothing will come of it.

Yet my contact form never gets any spam. I’ve only recently added any kind of captcha and it’s not as sophisticated as reCaptcha. Is that because it only gets sent to an individual and isn’t potentially displayed on a website?

My favourite, though, is the BMTG site. I have 3 contact forms on the site – a guest book entry (publishes on the site, but only after being approved), customer form (where they can send their details to the membership secretary) and contact form (where they can contact various members of management). Based on what I said initially, you can probably guess that it’s the Guest Book they target. And you’re right.

I have an easy-to-use switch which allows me to turn reCaptcha on and off for each of the forms, and I only have it turned on for the Guest Book. If I turn it off I literally get flooded. Why? What is the point? Nothing gets through and it’s a monumental waste of their time, surely? Because the Captcha in this case is fooling them, it must be an automated method being used – that might explain why no matter what messages I use, the message isn’t getting through.

Having said that, if it is automated, why doesn’t it target the other contact forms?

Tags: BMTG, reCAPTCHA, Spam

Category: Web Development