[Nfb-web] spam and email forms

[Peter Donahue]

Hello Dan and listers,

Using an E-mail form will stop some spam, but to significantly reduce or
eliminate it all together you would need a mechanism that is able to tell
legidament humans from spam bots. Here's where the use of some kind of
verification system comes in. Unfortunately the most common type of
verification techniques used is visual verification or CAPTCHAS. And as you
know the most form of CAPTCHAS in use are those that use visual
verification. They're great for stopping most spam bots, but render various
Web Site components including entire Web sites and other applications
unusable by the blind as they require the visitor to type in a series of
characters that are displayed in a manner undetectable by screen readers.

    There is another type of verification gaining favor which displays a
string of text that is able to be read by screen readers which requires the
visitor to answer a very simple question such as, "What sound does a dog
make?" The aim here is not to test the visitor's IQ, but to ensure that the
entity attempting to use your e-mail forms is a real human and not a spam
bot. Those whom I've talked to find that word verification is far more
effective in stopping e-mail spam via Web forms than is visual verification
some times stopping 100% of spammers. Hope this helps.

Peter Donahue

  ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan" <DOzuna at BlueBottle.com>
To: "NFB-Web" <nfb-web at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 6:34 PM
Subject: [Nfb-web] spam and email forms


Hi list,

Our web site has a "contact us" link. The email account associated with this
link is then fwd'd to my boss's account. In the last few weeks the amount of
spam coming through this account has picked up significantly. Will using an
email form help this situation? Any other ideas? Any help would be
appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan


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