Definition: form spam

Spam that shows up on website contact and feedback pages submitted to a company. Web pages with forms contain email addresses for sending the filled-in form to the appropriate department or employee in the company. They thus become targets of the spambots that roam the Web looking for personal email addresses.

A common prevention method is to use a CAPTCHA on the page, which requires the user to type in a strangely lettered word displayed on screen. Another approach requires the user to listen to a word and then type it in. However, many people find such methods annoying, and companies often choose to deal with the spam rather than inconvenience visitors who are contacting them. See CAPTCHA and spambot.

An Unprotected Forms Page

This is an example of a forms page hit with spam that was sent back to the company.