Reduce spam messages sent through your site's form or newsletter block.

Use this guide to reduce spammy messages sent through your site's form or newsletter blocks. Although there's no way to block all spam from reaching you, there are a few strategies to decrease the amount.

Why is this happening?

Spambots crawl the web looking for ways to share unsolicited content. They look for email addresses, forums, and contact forms. So, if you have a form block on your site, there's a chance you'll receive spam.

Form spam when using an email address

When you use an email address as your form block storage, all form submissions are delivered to your email inbox from a Squarespace email address, form-submission@squarespace.info. This doesn't guarantee the contents are legitimate or come directly from us. We'll never contact you through a form block on your site.

If we detect a form submission containing suspicious content, you'll see a warning at the top of the email, but review every submission carefully and avoid clicking suspicious links.

Spam form submissions often:

• Use a string of random letters and numbers in the subject field
• Ask you to click a link to make a "secure payment" for something
• List a contact name and email address you don't recognize

In these cases, we recommend not clicking suspicious links in the body of the submission or contacting the supposed sender. You may also want to read more about how to spot a phishing scam.

Report spam

If we detect a submission that looks like spam, a warning appears at the top of the email. Click Report not spam to let us know if we flagged a message that wasn't spam.

If we don't detect anything suspicious in the form but the submission still looks like spam to you, report it to us by clicking Report spam. We'll investigate and use these reports to improve our spam detection and prevention measures.

Reduce spam using Google reCAPTCHA

The best way to prevent spammy messages through your forms is to use Google reCAPTCHA. Google reCAPTCHA is an invisible tool that distinguishes humans from spambots. When a visitor fills out a form or newsletter signup, a reCAPTCHA logo may appear at the bottom of your site.

Google reCAPTCHA is available on form blocks, newsletter blocks, promotional pop-ups, and product waitlists. To learn more, visit Adding Google reCAPTCHA to forms.

Reduce spam using a confirmation email

Another great way to prevent form spam is to select Squarespace or Mailchimp as your storage option. Both services send a confirmation email, which requires subscribers to confirm their subscription before they’re added to a mailing list.

If you use Squarespace, the confirmation email is enabled for newsletter blocks, promotional pop-ups, and cover pages. To learn more, visit Subscriber verification.

If you use Mailchimp, the confirmation email (which Mailchimp calls double opt-in) is enabled by default. To learn more, visit Mailchimp's documentation.