Protecting Your Web Forms

To protect your lead-capturing web forms from bot attacks, you must ensure the necessary security measures are in place.

Note: These recommendations are necessary for any third-party webforms that you manage outside of GymSales.

What is a Bot Attack?

 A bot attack involves automated software (bots) targeting online forms to perform malicious actions such as:

• Spam: Bots can fill out forms with irrelevant or harmful content, including advertisements, phishing links, or misleading information. This often affects contact forms, comment sections, and registration pages.
• Credential Stuffing: Bots attempt to use stolen username and password combinations (often obtained from data breaches) to gain unauthorized access to user accounts via login forms.
• Data Harvesting: Bots scrape publicly available information (such as email addresses or names) from forms, which can later be used for spam campaigns or sold on the dark web.
• Denial of Service (DoS): Bots can overwhelm a form or page with excessive submissions, overloading the server and causing performance issues or downtime.
• Fake Account Creation: Bots may generate fraudulent accounts to spam, manipulate social media metrics (such as likes or follows), or exploit services.

How Do I Protect My Web Forms?

To protect your website forms from these threats, we recommend implementing the following security measures as soon as possible.

1. Enable CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA: Blocks most bots from submitting forms automatically.
2. Implement Honeypot Fields: Uses invisible fields to trap bots, flagging them as suspicious.
3. Use Rate Limiting: Restricts excessive form submissions within a brief period to prevent abuse.
4. Monitor Behavioral Patterns: Detects and mitigates bot-like activity in real time.

These security measures are crucial to ensuring uninterrupted service. Without proper protection, bot attacks can degrade website performance and trigger automated security responses that may temporarily suspend messaging services such as SMS or email. Additionally, fraudulent accounts created by bots require extensive cleanup.

Please ensure your web administrator is aware of these requirements and can implement the necessary security measures needed for your online forms.