Spam emails from websites can be a big issue. Most types of spam are submitted by spam bots, which can produce a large volume of emails within a short amount of time, making the problem even more painful. Here are a few ways to reduce email spam from websites.

1 – Don’t Display Your Email Address

Displaying your email address directly on your website makes your address visible to everyone, including spam bots. This makes it really easy for spammers to send messages to you. They don’t even need to interact with your website after they grab the address. Your information can be added to lists and targeted over and over again. One way to prevent this from happening is to hide your email address. Instead, use webforms that still send emails to you without making your information visible.

2 – Use reCaptcha on Forms

Contact forms can also be a target for spam. Essentially, spambots can crawl websites, look for forms, make entries into fields, and submit. Typically, the entries into each field don’t necessarily make sense. It can be garbled information or characters in other languages.

There are a few ways to address this. First, some webforms have a spam-blocking feature where a hidden field is inserted. Regular visitors don’t see this field but spambots will see it and make an entry, which allows the form to detect that it’s spam.

Another solution is to add reCaptcha. This inserts a field that a user must check a box, transcribe text, or even calculate a math problem. This can help reduce automated spam, although a human can still technically visit websites and manually submit spam-like information. These tend to be less of an issue compared to automated spam in large volumes.

3 – Use Spam Filters

If your email program has a spam filter, that can help detect and filter those messages. If possible, have spam emails moved into a separate folder rather than immediately deleted. Sometimes, legitimate emails are accidentally marked as spam. Moving them into a separate folder allows you to look for and recover them, if needed.

More Ways to Reduce Email Spam from Websites

If the above solutions don’t significantly reduce the amount of spam generated from your website, consult with your webmaster for other options. It’s often possible to block senders, IP addresses, and phrases within emails. Spam not only consumes your time, but it also uses server resources. Both can impact your operations and productivity. It’s therefore worthwhile to spend time addressing ways to reduce email spam from websites.