4 Must-Have Drupal Spam Prevention Modules

Positive or negative, in this digital age, we are being bombarded with tons of spams. You visit any website, like online video converter or free Bollywood songs, you get dozens of mails and advertising pop-ups on your system.

 It's indeed very annoying and undoubtedly it gets more frequent and worse day by day. After a point of time, people get so sick of these never-ending spams that they start looking for solutions to end them.

 But can this be stopped? Frankly speaking, without sugar-coating, spams will happen whether you want it or not. Though, here’s a good news. We can surely pick ways to lessen them effectively with Drupal Spam Prevention Modules. It could lead to fewer spam accounts and thus fewer spam comments.

Usually, on a digital platform, Spam comes in two major forms - human feeding data and spambots.

Using Drupal spam prevention, there are four major modules to prevent spamming on your system. Let's have a look at them: 

Captcha and reCaptcha spam prevention module

The Drupal captcha module provides the users with an API based on other spam prevention modules. Drupal captcha also comes with essential preconfigured captchas.

Drupal captcha is nothing but a challenge-response test module. It can be seen on web forms/ applications/ registration pages to determine whether the user is human or not. The main objective is to block/ restrict any possible submissions by other spambots available on the world wide web. 

Spambots are basically automated scripts used to post spam content to every nook and corner of the internet possible. Drupal captcha module provides this feature to the users visiting a web form/ registration page on a Drupal website or landing page.

Let’s have a look at the purpose of Drupal reCaptcha.

Drupal reCaptcha is simply an extension of the basic Drupal Captcha spam prevention module. Recaptcha though is a free Drupal spam prevention module that is aimed at protecting your website from spam content and other damaging/ abusive content. It not only uses an advanced risk analysis engine but also takes adaptive challenges into account in order to keep automated software away from spams and abuses online. And thus let the valid human users pass through gates sans glitches.

Drupal Anti-Spam module

Drupal Antispam module provides spam protection using external spam prevention modules like Akismet. It is also a successor of the Akismet drupal spam prevention module. 

It is completely compatible and functional with Drupal 6.x, 7.x, and 8.x. Drupal Anti-Spam module works by checking the number of published comments by a valid human user. If he/she has posted certain comments or replies, Anti-Spam automatically upgrades the user's role to the specific function on the respective site.

It also expanded the support of the external antispam modules with few popular ones like TypePad, Defensio, etc. It made it easier for users to select their Drupal spam prevention modules as wished.

Drupal Honeypot Spam Prevention Module

Drupal Honeypot is popular as the father of anti-spam modules. It’s so good and convenient that Drupal relies more on Honeypot anti-spam module than others.

Drupal basically creates a hidden field for users with a label. The label is enticing to a spambot like any URL or site link. If that particular field is filled in already, then it is definitely a spambot.

Configuration can be time-based as well, defaulting to 5-10 seconds only varying from site to site. If the required data gets filled within 5 seconds, then it’s a spambot. So, it is not advisable to use the same for short formats like creating or resetting passwords.

Drupal Honeypot is simple and yet so effective. The best part is, Drupal Honeypot spam prevention is an invisible field added to any form submission or registration page where data is needed. So, if the invisible field is filled out (usually spambots put in some data or values), then the particular submission form or registration page will show an error in return.

 Valid human users, on the other hand, will not be able to see the field ever, so no point in filling the same.

Drupal Antibot Spam Prevention Module

Drupal Antibot or commonly known as Antibot Drupal 8 in the industry (as Antibot spam prevention module is compatible with both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8) is a small, simple yet effective spam prevention module that is not dependant on human interaction.

Antibot Drupal 8 functions on the assumptions showing that spambots will not try to process javascript. In this case, the only requirement for human users is to enable javascript on their respective browsers.

In certain cases, where a spambot renders a form/ submission/ registration page with javascript, Antibot Drupal 8 spam prevention module checks for users’ keyboard key press. It also checks for the users’ mouse movement before allowing any sort of form submission.

From a performance point of view, this Drupal spam protection module also allows for page caching while protecting the same from digital abuses and damages. Thus, it is an extremely significant advantage over other Drupal spam prevention services or modules that otherwise disable cache on pages with anti-spam submission forms.

There are other Drupal spam protection tools or services available in the market. The users need to do thorough research before going for one. Also, Drupal web form spam prevention is a tested and effective way to make your life a little easier and happier than without it.