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About BrightFire’s Spam Prevention Strategy

At BrightFire, we understand that spam is a persistent challenge for websites, threatening user experience, security, and credibility. To combat this, we employ a robust, multi-layered approach to spam prevention, integrating cutting-edge tools and techniques tailored for BrightFire’s web environment. We proactively minimize spam by combining reCAPTCHA (v3), Akismet, Anti-Spam Honeypots, and industry-leading third-party advanced networks while ensuring seamless functionality for legitimate users.

Understanding Spam: Origins, Challenges, & Considerations

Spam originates from automated bots, malicious actors, and even human spammers seeking to exploit websites for profit, data theft, or disruption. Common motives include injecting malicious links, harvesting user data, or overwhelming forms with irrelevant submissions to clog systems or manipulate SEO. Bots, which account for a significant portion of spam, crawl the web to target form vulnerabilities. Human spammers may also employ phishing attempts.

Despite advanced countermeasures, some spam may still bypass protections due to the evolving nature of spamming techniques. Sophisticated bots mimic human behavior, and spammers continually adapt to bypass filters. Additionally, overly strict filters risk blocking legitimate users, so a balance must be struck to maintain usability while minimizing spam.

BrightFire’s Multi-Layered Spam Prevention Strategy

reCAPTCHA v3

BrightFire enables reCAPTCHA v3 on every website we manage.

Google’s reCAPTCHA (v3) is like an invisible security guard for your website. It quietly watches how visitors interact with your site, such as how they move their mouse, how long they stay on a page, or how they click around. Analyzing these actions gives each visitor a score to decide if they’re a real person or a bot trying to cause trouble. Unlike older versions, where the user had to click “I’m not a robot” or select pictures of a common theme, reCAPTCHA v3 works behind the scenes, so your visitors don’t even notice it. This keeps your website safe from spam without slowing down or frustrating real users filling out forms.

Akismet

Akismet is active on every BrightFire website.

Powered by advanced machine learning, Akismet analyzes user submissions in real time. Legitimate submissions are allowed, and spam form submissions are filtered out.

Akismet is trusted by some of the biggest companies in the world, like Microsoft, WordPress, ConvertKit, and Bluehost. Since it is powered by machine learning, we learn more about spam and get more accurate with each site we protect. After analyzing real spam data on over 100M users, Akismet is very well adapted to blocking spam super-efficiently.

Anti-Spam Honeypot

All BrightFire forms include a hidden honeypot field.

A honeypot is a hidden form field that is invisible to users but can be detected by automated bots. It's designed to catch and block spam bots by tricking them into interacting with the hidden field, as humans would not.

As the name suggests, a honeypot is a “trap” designed to lure bots and computer programs into accidentally revealing their identities.

Whenever a form is submitted, if the honeypot field is filled, BrightFire ignores the form submission, classifying it as spam.

Advanced Networks

All BrightFire websites are hosted on industry-leading third-party advanced networks.

Your BrightFire website is hosted on a network that leverages layer three and layer four DDoS protection. Our networks also support HTTP/3, which provides better encryption than TCP and TLS. Combining these technologies improves your website's speed, scalability, and security at the DNS level.

At BrightFire, we are committed to protecting your website from spam and other threats, allowing you to focus on confidently growing your business. While no system can eliminate every instance of spam, our multi-layered strategy significantly reduces its impact, keeping your site secure and user-friendly. For a deeper dive into our comprehensive security practices, visit additional support resources here to discover how BrightFire empowers your online success.


Countries Blocked

As a security measure, we block all traffic from all IP addresses from the countries listed below.

  1. BD - Bangladesh
  2. BR - Brazil
  3. BY - Belarus
  4. CN - China
  5. CU - Cuba
  6. ID - Indonesia
  7. IE - Ireland
  8. IN - India
  9. IR - Iran
  10. KP - Korea
  11. NG - Nigeria
  12. PK - Pakistan
  13. RO - Romania
  14. RU - Russia
  15. SA - Saudi Arabia
  16. TR - Turkey
  17. UA - Ukraine
  18. VN - Vietnam