Keep track of your registered leads from the Leads navigation in the IDX Control Panel. You might see a new lead that doesn't appear to be genuine. These may appear with an identical first and last name, or the name is unintelligible, or the message they've sent is full of advertising links. These are known as "Spam Leads". With an increase in spam worldwide, IDX continues to work on improving methods to reduce these bad leads so that you can focus on providing the best service to real people.
IDX Broker has incorporated several options to help reduce the number of Spam Leads your account receives. Besides the background processes that prevent bots from signing up with fake names, there are additional settings that you can control in your account.
Spam lead prevention settings are found under Leads, in the Lead Registration section, Advanced mode, Sign Up Page tab.
Below are descriptions of these methods:
CAPTCHAs
CAPTCHA is a tool to help tell a person from a computer. Some spam submissions come from programs, or "robots", that go out on the Internet looking for forms to fill out. reCAPTCHA v3 works based on the users interaction with the site and blocks interactions that are similar to that of a bot. It is easy for your real leads to pass through the test, while preventing spammers from filling your inbox.
reCAPTCHA v3 scores the users interaction with the site and as long as the interaction receives a score of 0.5, the user will be able to submit their contact information successfully.
Reverse CAPTCHA
Reverse CAPTCHA is a similar kind of tool to help tell a person from a "robot". In this case, an extra form field is added to your contact forms and is hidden from the view of your visitors. A "robot", or computer spam program, will read the code of your form and attempt to fill out that field anyway. If a form submission comes through with anything in that hidden field, the IDX tools know that the lead is actually a Spam Lead and filters it out automatically.
Reverse CAPTCHA is enabled on your search forms automatically.
Block Lead Submissions From Outside North America
Occasionally, actual people instead of “robots” make spam submissions. These spam leads are not as easy to stop with CAPTCHA. If you are still getting Spam Leads even with CAPTCHA enabled on your account, you may wish to block out contact form submissions that originate from outside of North America. This statistically blocks out the majority of places from which spam originates.
IP Blocking
If you are getting persistent Spam lead signups from the same individual, you can report this to the IDX Broker Support Team and we may be able to block the IP of that user. This will prevent them from seeing any IDX content at all. It is a total lock out. They will still be able to see your website, but not the IDX pages.
WordPress
If you have a WordPress site running IMPress for IDX Broker, you have additional options available to you.
Visit the bottom of IMPress -> General Settings to enable Google reCAPTCHA. Slide the reCAPTCHA toggle to ON and your new signup widgets will now have reCAPTCHA enabled to prevent spam signups.