How To Validate A Viewer's Email Address?

[lisabennett]

I have a very simple contact form on my website, Pointeshoe.net. I ask for the viewer's name, e-mail, and message. My problem is not being able to figure out how to validate the viewers e-mail before they submit. I have so much spam coming in on a daily basis. Today I had 143 blank spams where possibly a spambot pushed the submit button 143 times. I re-did the e-mail field with an edit box from the tool bar and checked the validate field. I republished the page but it wont validate. I put in a phony e-mail address and submitted it to myself. The phony message went right through. What am I doing wrong with the edit Box?

http://www.pointeshoe.net/contact.php

[navaldesign]

Re: How To Validate A Viewer's Email Address?

Email validation can only see if the format of the user input LOOKS like a real email address.

If, in example, I type 123456789@987654321.com it will go through validation just fine.

There is no way to check if an email address IS real. Ther are some scripts that will try to verifythe existance of the email address (from the email address typed) by sending a request to the server. Since not all servers reply with the appropriate message, there is no way to verify it. Also, most spammers / hackers use stolen email addresses, which, therefore, would result ok, although used by the spammer.

Since most spam is sent through bots, try at least adding a captcha in your form.

Anyway your validation doesn't work because you have named the form "Contact Pointeshoe.net"
Rename it to simply "contactform" without whitespaces and dots / symbols.

[lisabennett]

Re: How To Validate A Viewer's Email Address?

Thank you ! I appreciate your help and will go and change those things.