Contact Form SPAM 😢

[nelsonic]

Just got 12 identical emails:

All the same ... this person "chasing" to be given write-access to on of our GitHub repos:

But we get a lot of spam through our contact-us form ...

@iteles guessing you get these too as they go to the "shared" email address. Do you just ignore them? 💭

This has been an issue for a while #310 and has never been fully resolved.
But rather than re-opening the old issue I'm opening this focussed one.

The contact form: https://dwyl.com/#contact allows people to easily submit a message:

I'm actually a fan of having this kind of immediately accessible contact form on a website from a UX perspective. 👍
It's zero friction which is great for legitimate contacts. 🎉
But the downside is that it makes SPAM very easy too. 😢

Todo

• Investigate alternative high-privacy options for managing contact form submissions.

[nelsonic]

I knew I'd captured this problem before: dwyl/contact#6 ⏳
We really need_ to resolve this. 😞
I'm tempted to just disable the contact form on the website in the short-run.

[nelsonic]

This bugs me multiple times a day. This morning I got spam on my wrist (Apple Watch) at 05:47 while reading ... 😢
It needs to stop. Now. 🙅

[nelsonic]

Removing the Contact page from the website:

[nelsonic]

PR: #500 @SimonLab 🙏

[nelsonic]

No more Contact Form on any of the pages and updated the "App" Page:

Hopefully the SPAM can stop now. 🤞

[nelsonic]

Bulk deleting the SPAM:

[nelsonic]

1300 messages in 2022. 3.56 / day. Enough! 😡

[iteles]

Sounds like a plan. People can reach us on GH if they need to.
We don't need tonbe reached just now and when we do, we can do this right.

FYI I just had a filter which skipped the inbox and went through the folder once every couple of weeks. Also, I don't get email notifications on my phone. Ain't nobody got time for that.

[nelsonic]

I had notifications on in case legit people contacted us, which they did. 🔔
But ever since the bots discovered our website / form it's been constant SAPAM. 👎
A filter could have been a good <option>, but I consider it a bit of a bandaid 🩹
This makes it very clear to spammers/scammers that we aren't open for that crap anymore. 🙅