Though digitization has blessed us with the progress that we could have never thought of before the invention of technology, it has also challenged us with its loopholes. As the entire world is transforming digitally, it creates hyper-connected networks that need thorough evaluation regularly to fill any spawning gap. Failing to do so can open up routes for hackers to root into your system.
The latest addition in the world of cybercrimes is bot attack, which is a set of programs designed by hackers to launch automated attacks into your system. The process is conducted by corrupt spambots to get unauthorized access to your unique content, business strategy, and private information, which eventually affects the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking of your organization. Spambots are small units that crawl the web for email addresses found in social media channels, forums, comments, and web pages such as ‘Contact Us’ pages. As the layout of email ID largely varies, spambots can easily jot down programs to gather in that specific format.
The information collected is used by rival companies to fill fake forms and send spam emails to the addresses collected unethically. It begins with spambots trying to locate “mailto” (HTML expressions that are used for presenting email IDs on the web). While many users prefer using the “mailto” tag, some may choose words instead of symbols so that spambots cannot notice them. Spambots are also defined as automated programs that crawl or run online to collect email addresses for individuals and organizations that will implement its data on email addresses to deliver (spam) email.
If you identify behavior such as increasing bounce rates, short time on site, numerous sessions generating all at once and from the same specific IP address and specific geographical location, you need to be aware of spambots. Further, you need to examine the type of traffic source, whether it is a referral or direct, check the technology platform, and if the network source has been used by spambots to create the traffic session.
To avoid spambots and protect email marketing against being spammed, you need to build an email list organically and a personalized confirmation message, include CAPTCHA, set the right expectations, plant a link to unsubscribe, make use of HTML, and include a spam spotting field.
If you notice a significant problem area, you can resort to IP address blocking of the specific location. Though this will also disable the forms for your genuine customers, it will protect your system from perplexing cybercrimes. Alternatively, you can also set up a limit for the number of web forms that can be submitted IP addresses.
You can implement graphics to protect your email address because spambots cannot scroll and read a graphic. Adding visual elements and templates to your email, clipping them, avoiding spammy keywords, and using less text helps emails from getting marked as spam. Another way to deal with spambots is to break the email address by entering space and tags in between the words within email addresses, and then rendering it accurately when the web page is live. Also, make sure you ask subscribers to add your address to their email address book to avoid being redirected to the spam box.
Since attacking from the customer’s browser angle is an option for hackers, you should ideally hide your target request by denying an access request to sensitive data directly from the browser and having the potential candidate type it.
