I’ve only just migrated from Aweber to ActiveCampaign and I’m initially generally disappointed in the platform.
It’s slow, clunky and has a bad UI.
That aside, a have a huge problem with a vast number of bots signing up to one of my lists. We added a honeypot hidden field to the form and tagged those that filled it. Russian and spammy domains registered in the US joining every 10 minutes or so, it so obvious they’re spam bots, however ActiveCampaign support are refusing to help or do anything. This has been going on for a few weeks.
Any suggestions or help would be gratefully received.
I’d rather not at this stage, Steven. I’d rather go back to Aweber than lose email contacts. It’s bad for business.
Luckily, I have someone who knows a bit about what they’re doing helping me with this.
We edited the form in AC adding a honeybot field for bot detection.
Bots that fill in honeypot fields not visible to a human user are being blocked (Javascript stops them from being able to submit to activecampaign and just sends them to the homepage)
(SumoMe couldn’t be done via this though).
Bots that supply a non-expected area field are tagged ‘Bot - Bad Area Found’ I’ve had 50 of these in the last day or so.
Unfortunately loads of them are still getting through.
I love their UI. However, if you are running queries against it, such as search for contacts meeting criteria, it can take a 10 seconds to return the results. I found that once I understood the mindset of AC, everything made a bit more sense - contact driven, not list driven. Anyway…
To the spam stuff… any time you have a single-optin list, this can be a problem. You could change to a double-optin so people have to click a link in their email to confirm.
There is another option which I find a lot of the “pros” use (i use it myself):
Create an automation that runs whenever you get a new contact. If they don’t open any emails, click any links in emails, or visit your home page (or any of your popular posts) within 30 days, you automatically send them an email with a link to a one-question survey: “how can I better help you?” If they don’t open that email, click the link or respond, then you auto-unsubscribe them.
This process will get rid of the spam emails as well as people who only signed up for whatever free resource was offered.
Would you mind PMing me your support ticket? I’d like to look into what’s going on - we are here to help!
Awesome idea with the honeypot field! Have not come across that one yet
As @tigergreenproduction mentioned incorporating reCAPTCHA and a double opt-in into your form & submission strategy is an excellent way to combat spam like you’re experiencing.
In addition to @tigergreenproduction’s suggestion to incorporate the engaged/disengaged automation, one of our other users in the community experienced a spike in his spam submissions as well. His form ended up being “spoofed,” as he did not see traffic going to his _thankyou page redirect post submission. Hopefully this isn’t the case, but I would recommend looking into this scenario!
Hello Ted, I have PMed you and I would really appreciate some help on this. Please remember I never received one spam submission on Aweber. Now I’ve moved on to AC and I get thousands of them on multiple lists and all support are saying is “they don’t look like spam submissions to us and we’re not doing anything to help you”.
Received your PM - I see that you’ve been working with our developer Matt, and we were able to identify that the submissions you provided came in via API and not a form.
From the ticket, in regards to possible resolutions, I wanted to check with integrations you’ve implemented that utilize your API. Perhaps one of these is causing the spam submissions.
Then if those do not seem to be the root of the issue, resetting your API key would be the next recommended step.
I’m having the SAME issue and to make it worse there is a cap on how many I can delete on any one billing period. I’m sure it is an API, but now I have to remove all my API opt ins from optimize press to stop the flood gates? I really like active campaign, paid quite a bit to get certified and all of a sudden I can’t use my account or send emails out because I am over my limit. And just as I upgrade my account to include the CRM features, the live chat support goes away
Anyone understand the point, qui bono? These are real people’s email addresses that are being added to my list by the thousands
I’m sorry to hear you’re affected by this issue. There are two things you can do to fix this problem:
Turn on double opt-in
Use a Recaptcha field
I realize each of these suggestions comes with unfortunate downsides. I have taken your concern and added to an internal feedback item we have on this issue. I cannot promise when we’ll release a code-based fix for this, but I can say the issue is on our radar. Until then, these two suggestions will prevent the spam addresses from being added to your list.
You’ll never get rid of these bots. 6 months on and I’m still getting 100s a day. No idea about real signup, open and click through rates. I rue the decision to join AC. Support is non-existent on this.
Turning on double opt-in will fix the issue for you. This is exactly why double opt-in is important and useful. We’re a bit more flexible than some providers in that we don’t require opt-in confirmation all the time. But, we still offer it for situations like this.
The argument could be made that opt-in confirmation creates a higher quality list, and saves you money, by filtering out uninterested contacts. I understand this is debatable and you’ll find mixed opinions, but it’s an effective solution to the problem of bots trying to add people to your list without authorization. We cannot control the bots, but we have provided you a way to fight them.
I’m in the process of switching all my opt ins to forms to utilize the double opt in option, but then I can use the pretty and easy OptimizePress boxes, nor will I want to use them for my clients. What I need is a complete lift on my ability to even delete! I have been able to pool them at least to make it easy but the system won’t let me delete anymore.
PLUS, I planned to start advertising and bringing in more people to this list…I don’t want the fakes mixing in. As of right now, I am not sure where they are coming from
Would you please reach out to support and ask them to reset your delete limit? The limit is an anti-spam measure and we can raise that limit under special circumstances like this. Just explain what is going on or include a link to this thread to give them some additional context.
Thanks for getting back.
These contacts fill in the name field with something like: 5834f65c676b9 for example.
They also never “open” an email according to my active campaign info.
They don’t have a region identified in their profile.
They sign up at very regular intervals, like every 20 minutes it seems.
I spent a while last night changing the form they sign up with to include double optin, and that has not stopped them coming like clockwork.
