Interesting Spam Question

If the person is unaware they are signing up for a newsletter and receive one then they have been spammed.
Spamming is basically getting something you did not ask for.

When I make up a form that includes a newsletter option I set it to yes as default, but make it very clear there is a no option if they dont want it.

A lot of people wont unsubscribe because this is a method of being added to spam lists, instead they wil just report your spammings to spamcop etc which will get your hosts server blacklisted which doesn't usually go down well.

I think the key factor here is the "act of signup retention" on the subscribers memory. Sometimes, people do signup on subscription form, forget it after some time and when you email, they are surprised and might even get angry they will report you to Spamcop or similar blacklisting sites.

Its better to have a follow through email within 3 days after signup to remind that person that they signed up for newsletter or whatever and that they can expect emails from you anytime from that day.

Otherwise, people will forget and they will blame you for that.

I have a question about how to STOP SPAM from coming from forms.
I maintain a site that has "comments sections. They're not blogs; but we offer the opportunity to visitors to comment on the content of the site, as well as, respond to other commentors. The comment forms are simple cgi-perl that return the comments, from the submitter, to an email address. This email address gets about 10-20 SPAM per day. The SPAM doesn't look like 'bot' SPAM, but it's possible tha it is since I don't have any special blocking features coded in the cgi-perl form. I don't know how to quite do that...
I have heard of a function called "Captcha" or something like that; where an image comes up with letters that have to be typed in. This disallows 'bots'. My concern is, what do I do about the SPAM if it's NOT 'bots'??
Any ideas on SPAM-proofing the cgi-perl forms?
Tell me what you think.
Here's an example of the SPAM that's coming from one of the forms:

"Comments : Great site!! My pages Ephedra or Ephedra bye!

Name : Doctor

Name : Doctor

Email : [email protected]

Submit : Submit"

Fact: People sign up to receive things and then forget. Without making them go to extreme which would prevent most people from signing up in the first place, people will still forget.

Where I worked before, I have received emails from very upset people who are complaining that they have no idea about us, and don't want to be involved. What was the e-mail they were receiving that led to this? A monthly invoice from their credit card being billed (as it had been done for several months).

After calling them, talking to them, and asking them to visit the site, they suddenly remember actually signing up for the service (especially when they logged in and saw their private company data they had entered).

So it isn't just a small e-mail subscription people forget, they will even forget something they came to PURCHASE and continue to get billed for....

My advise, log as much info as you can about the signup (time/date, their ip address), do confirmation e-mails with a link that they need to visit to activate the subscription, prepare to have people complain, and when they do, give them the benfit of the doubt that they just forgot, and be as polite as possible in removing them, and offer to see log of the signup process so they "can investigate someone submitting their information". (this comes across better than a "hey, I here's proof you just forgot" message to offer them the proof).

-Greg

You have to make sure that the "VERY" first line includes the session_start code otherwise it will not work. Also check the link to the site, they have a tool to check that server supports the GD library, which I would assume your server does, seeing how you saw the image once. Leave your question on the site and Aleister will offer all the help you need. Also tell him where your hosted, as that may help him help you. Im not sure what you removed, make sure when you leave a comment for Aleister you leave a link to the page so he may look at the code. Hope this helps.