We have all experienced or received spam in one form or another since the invention of the internet. No, I'm not talking about the salty canned meat that we all love, I'm referring to those annoying and outlandish emails that make their way to your inbox – sometimes through your contact form or your office email.  

So, What Is Spam? 

Spam emails are usually sent out by "bots" that flood the internet with these types of messages. Statistics show out of about 14.5 billion messages are sent per day globally, and about 45 percent of those are some sort of spam. That is a lot of spam! The content within spam emails is usually geared to cause alarm or make you click on a link. These bots are looking to collect any information they can. No need to panic! Great Dental Websites has tools in place to block traffic from known IP addresses and countries that this traffic originates from. There are also steps you can take to help! 

How Do We Combat Spam? 

When we see spam come in we identify the source IP for the messages (block going forward), as well as elevate the Recaptcha requirements on the contact form to stop the flow of new messages.  In addition to the elevated Recaptcha requirements added to the contact form, we add additional countries to our blacklist to provide an extra layer of insurance against contact form exploits. What can you do if spam makes it your way:

• If you receive an email from your contact form that you feel is suspicious, please reach out to your account manager or our support team. 
• DO NOT mark as spam if it does, in fact, come from your contact form. This could mark future messages from your contact form as spam. 
• Avoid clicking on any links in the email or opening the email.
• Confirm email is not from an actual patient and just hit delete. 
• Emails that come directly to your email outside of the contact form on your website can be marked as spam. 

If you have any questions regarding spam, or how the contact form works, please reach out to us anytime!