For A Spammer, Any Web Form is An Orifice Asking to Be Filled

This is an old, tired, dog beaten story on this blog, but for the umpteenth time I’ve had to modify some web form that sis et up to collect data, because some script junkie decided to fill the form fields with PPC URLS (links to porn, pills, casinos, the un-holy trinity).

It’s all in the hopes that web forms will actually post the content somewhere to a web page, which then improves, in theory, the Google Rank for the spammers slimy client.

It must work, as it would not be tried if not. And for the umpteenth umpteenth time, I must wag my paw at Google, since they provide the financial incentive that robs many a blogger and small time web owner of time spent dealing with form spam.

This is what I had to do this morning, on a form that does nothing but collect some contact information, and sends it my email to someone at the office (well, it does keep a record in a database). Again, a URL that is less than 3 weeks old, not blogged anywhere, is now a major funnel for el crappo, irrelevant content, and it consumes the staff time on our office of having to wade through it for deletion.

I tossed in some roadblocks now, mainly on by being able to pattern match check the input for places where the spammers are putting URLs and where information entered obviously distinguishes them from legit attempts. To the spam roaches doing this, they get the impression their efforts got submitted, but actually the info gets shuttled to the dung heap. I’ve also set up some random changing keys to ensure that any input comes from the web form, not scripted from the dark underground fetid lairs where spammers live.

Meanwhile, I continue in vain to wait for the Great Minds of Google to stop creating incentive and rewards for URL spamming.

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