Hello there @trbhicks ,
Thank you for reaching out with your concerns about the irregular subscriber entries you’ve been receiving. It seems that your subscription form may have caught the attention of a spam bot. These bots are known for automatically filling out forms with random and often nonsensical email addresses, like the ones you’ve described.
What you’re experiencing is not uncommon, and, fortunately, there are steps you can take to mitigate this:Implement CAPTCHA
The first and most effective measure would be to add a CAPTCHA to your subscription forms. CAPTCHA challenges are designed to distinguish human input from bot activity. Adding this to your forms should significantly reduce the number of spam subscriptions. For instructions on how to add CAPTCHA to MailPoet forms, please consult our knowledge base article here:
Add CAPTCHA to MailPoet Subscription Forms
Additionally, you should protect all entry points, including contact forms, comment sections, and registration forms. Resources like the following can guide you in strengthening these forms against bots:
Refine Registration Settings:
Another angle to tackle this issue is to tweak registration settings. You mentioned wanting a filter; while MailPoet doesn’t provide this specific filter feature, you can control random registrations differently:
- For WordPress:
Disable “Anyone can register” in the ‘Membership’ setting under Settings > General.
- For WooCommerce:
Uncheck ‘Allow customers to create an account on the “My account” page’ under WooCommerce > Settings > Accounts & Privacy.
This way, you can limit account creation to only during the checkout process, which can deter spambots that target registration pages.
I hope this helps.
