Have you ever filled in a web registration form on websites like Yahoo! and Google where you have to type in some text from an image of some distorted characters or words?
This is a security measure called CAPTCHA. A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. CAPTCHAs are used on websites to prevent abuse from “bots,” or automated programs usually written to generate masses of annoying spam. Currently computers find it difficult to read distorted text as well as humans can, so this means bots can’t hijack forms protected by CAPTCHAs.
Your Website’s contact forms must have some type of security in place else you’ll get a nasty spam bot come along and hijack the form to send hundreds of thousands of spams resulting in your server ending up on other peoples servers black lists. These attacks can even bring down the whole server and all it’s websites with it. The first you’ll know about it is your host getting very annoyed with you because your website has just sent out half a million spams. They’ll also turn your server off unless it’s fixed within a few hours.
If you need help with preventing your contact forms from getting abused please don’t hesitate to contact us.
For more information on CAPTCHAs see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha
