No Security Question on Signup Form

Laurie Marrs

We are hesitant to replace our existing 'Join our eNews' form on our website with the Onine Express form as there is no security question which prevents spammers from entering bogus info. Our webmaster said we got a lot of spam before adding a security question to our form. Have been told via Chat that this is not an option. Has anyone been using the form for awhile and if so are you seeing spam?

Susan Ross

Hi Laurie -- Susan here from Blackbaud.  Great question!  I don't see any responses yet so I thought I would weigh in.



I have not heard of any organizations having overwhelming problems when using a the email sign up form.  If there are some spammy emails that get through, they can always be deleted from the plug-in on the New Registrations tab. 



It is a best practice keep the email sign up form as simple as possible:  the longer the form is, the less likely it is a web visitor will fill it out.  We want to make it as easy as possible for new supporters to hear from us :-)



I would encourage you to try out the email sign up form and see how it goes.  If it does cause a problem, it can always be removed/deactivated. 



Let me know if you have any other questions, and report back how it goes!



Good luck!

Susan



 

Chris Martin

Hi Laurie. When someone adds their email address to your OLX email signup form, OLX sends a confirmation email to the email address provided. The recipient must click the link in that email before their email signup reaches your RE database.



While it's technically possible for someone bent on sending you automated bogus form submissions to automate both filling out the form and programmatically "clicking" the confirmation link in the confirmation email, you're very unlikely to be impacted by this.



Hopefully that helps!

Ashley Stevens

We're having an issue of matching the sign up to an actual constituent. We have multiple people with the same first and last name so we have no idea who is actually signing up for the email. Unless they're giving us an email that we already have.