How to set up spam protection for your opt-in forms in MAILINGWORK
Automated mass opt-ins driven by bots can significantly reduce the quality of your recipient lists and cause additional unplanned costs. To prevent this, MAILINGWORK offers you two ways to protect your opt-in form from automated registrations.
Basic Spam Protection: Invisible Integrated CAPTCHA
In the advanced settings tab of your opt-in setups, you will find an option for Basic Spam Protection. When this option is enabled, invisible security features are added to your form – the protection is completely transparent and invisible to real users.
When this option is enabled, a JavaScript is added to the form's source code that increments a numeric value every second as soon as the form is opened. Since a real person needs some time to fill out the form, this counter will have reached a certain value by the time the form is submitted. The MAILINGWORK server then checks whether this value is plausible – if the form is submitted too quickly (e.g. by an automated bot that does not execute JavaScript), the counter value is 0 or missing, and the submission is rejected.
Good to know: The feature is designed so that no legitimate opt-in is ever lost. If in doubt, a few spam opt-ins will be accepted rather than rejecting a genuine human registration.
Additional Spam Protection: Invisible Google reCAPTCHA
For even stronger protection, you can additionally activate the invisible Google reCAPTCHA. To do so, you first need to complete a one-time setup in your Google Account.
How to Set Up Google reCAPTCHA Step by Step
1. Register reCAPTCHA with Google
First, go to https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin. The form "Register new site" will open automatically.
2. Assign a label
Enter a label of your choice – for example, the name of your opt-in setup in MAILINGWORK, so you can easily identify it later.
3. Select reCAPTCHA type and domain
Select reCAPTCHA Version 3 and then enter the domain that your MAILINGWORK account uses as the redirect domain.
You can also find the redirect domain of your account in the advanced settings of your opt-in setup. Look in the field "Optin form URL" and transfer the URL shown there into the Google form. In this example, the redirect domain is "login.mailingwork.de".
4. Accept terms of service and submit
Accept Google's terms of service and submit the form.
5. Enter keys in MAILINGWORK
After submitting, you will receive a site key and a secret key. Copy both keys into the corresponding input fields of your opt-in setup in MAILINGWORK.
Once you have saved the entries, the Google reCAPTCHA will automatically be added to your form.
Please note: For the protection measures to take effect, the updated source code of the form must be transferred again to the website where the form is embedded.