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Reducing Spam in Online Forms

Reducing Spam in Online Forms. Preventing Spam from reaching the clients. By Benjamin Drolet University of Miami. Overview. Background Almost all websites use forms Most websites are viewable by the public Need to restrict forms to people who’s use is intended for

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Reducing Spam in Online Forms

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  1. Reducing Spam in Online Forms Preventing Spam from reaching the clients. By Benjamin Drolet University of Miami

  2. Overview • Background • Almost all websites use forms • Most websites are viewable by the public • Need to restrict forms to people who’s use is intended for • Many spammers will “blast” the forms with spam • Examples: • Contact us • Request a quote

  3. Objectives • Prevent spammers from blasting the form • Hidden to users • Did not want to use cryptic images • Value • The spammers will stop blasting our clients forms • Clients will be happy • We will be happy

  4. Company Background • Online Services IDM • Web site marketing company • Over 400 clients • Over 750 forms • Our competitors were blasting our clients forms • Their prices were sometimes better than ours

  5. Solution • Dynamic web pages: • Ability to display many different pages based on the input provide • This allows developers to design one page for many different uses • Scripting language used to create a html page

  6. HTML • Hypertext Markup Language • Can format text: headings, paragraph, title, etc. • Request user input through forms • Forms contain fields: hidden, radio, list, text, etc.

  7. Scripting Language • Server-side • Advantages • Users never see source code • Disadvantages • More server resources are used • Example: vbscript • Client-side • Advantages • Less server resources are used • Disadvantages • Client can see source code • Example: javascript

  8. Solving the problem • Current system: • All forms are directed to a central mailing system • This mailing system already has a few ways of validating the form: correctly formatted number, email, and text • Blacklisted certain sites from going through and rejected if certain words in the text

  9. Modifying the new system • Blacklisting is not very affective • Wanted to validate the user submitting the form • Every user now required to have a time stamp and hash stamp • Hash stamp: unique identifier, arbitrary • Time stamp: made to compare the amount of time thee user takes to verify

  10. The new system • when the user is redirected to the central mailing system, if they do not have a time stamp and hash stamp, they are created and asked to verify their input • When the user resubmits: • Verify the hash stamp is the same • Verify differences in time stamp is greater than 5 seconds and less than 2 minutes

  11. Demo • We are going to try a few different sites: • <Redacted> • <Redacted> • <Redacted>

  12. Summary • Forms are a good way to get user input on a website • Forms are public and need a way to validate input • Dynamic web pages are a solution to this problem • A way to validate users is by using a hash stamp and time stamp

  13. Special Thanks • Online Services IDM • Dr. Milenkovic • Dr. Sutcliffe • Renee Drolet

  14. Questions?

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