Top 10 Bot Protection Tools for HubSpot Forms

Abisola Tanzako | Aug 29, 2024

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One thing marketers often overlook is getting bot protection tools for HubSpot forms.

CRM systems are crucial resources for digital marketers, as they facilitate the management of both existing and potential customer contacts.

These systems help with connection building, communication, sales supervision, and customer data management.

Businesses can also access additional applications and connect to social media platforms within the CRMs.

HubSpot is one of the major CRM platforms with extensive marketing features.

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Its tools, such as HubSpot forms, enable businesses to create forms that collect data from website visitors.

However, CRM systems that handle such data are vulnerable to bot attacks, and HubSpot forms are no exception.

This article provides factors that can indicate bot activity, along with preventive measures to help safeguard your HubSpot forms from bot threats.

Are HubSpot forms vulnerable to bots?

Although HubSpot already has security measures in place, bot attacks can still impact its HubSpot forms, just like any other web-based entry system.

If bots are not adequately protected, they can constantly submit invalid forms, which might cause several problems for businesses.

HubSpot forms can be vulnerable to bot attacks for several reasons, including:

1. Lack of CAPTCHA implementation

Lack of CAPTCHA systems in HubSpot forms is a severe vulnerability.

Without CAPTCHA implementation, bots can easily submit forms to flood databases with invalid or spam entries.

2. Inability to implement rate restrictions

These are essential security measures.

They help limit the number of form submissions from a single IP address.

Bots can exploit a form with such a vulnerability by submitting multiple forms simultaneously, resulting in data skewing, server overload, and potential denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

3. Input validation

HubSpot forms without user input validation are vulnerable to bot attacks.

Bots can insert invalid scripts, SQL queries, or other malicious data into form fields, which may compromise the form’s integrity and the linked database.

4. Predictable form structure and field names

When HubSpot forms have common or predictable field names and structures, it’s easy for Bots to automate form submissions.

Bots can mimic and fill these standard fields, making it difficult for businesses to differentiate between entries created by bots and genuine user inputs.

5. Lack of browser fingerprinting

When companies using HubSpot forms ignore the use of browser fingerprints, they lose an essential level of bot detection.

Browser fingerprinting is an extra verification step; its absence can make forms vulnerable to bot attacks.

Sophisticated bots can imitate human actions, but they cannot accurately imitate the fingerprint of a real browser.

How essential is bot protection for HubSpot forms?

To keep HubSpot forms functional and accurate, bot prevention is essential.

Without implementing proper safety measures, HubSpot forms data are at risk of bot attacks:

1. Data integrity:

For a business to gain accurate and valuable information, bot protection is essential.

Bots can enter false data into the database, changing the statistics and lowering the quality of leads.

Take protective measures to ensure the accuracy of marketing and sales activities.

2. Conservation of resources:

By taking preventive measures, businesses can ensure their servers and databases stay calm, protecting processing power and ensuring high performance for authorized users.

3. Spam prevention:

Bot protection can serve as a barrier, saving time, safeguarding your brand, and significantly reducing the risk of spam that reaches the team or customers.

4. Lead quality:

Screening out Bot submissions helps guarantee that the sales team is working with genuine, qualified leads.

This boosts conversion rates, increases productivity, and eventually enhances the return on investment for your marketing and sales initiatives.

5. Security improvement:

Implementing bot protection on HubSpot forms can help enhance security, secure confidential data, and shield a company against security breaches.

How can a bot impact HubSpot forms?

Bots can impact HubSpot forms by decreasing the efficacy of marketing campaigns and causing losses for organizations by interfering with HubSpot form submissions:

1. Spam submissions:

Bots can quickly fill out forms with irrelevant or harmful information, resulting in spam overload, which makes it challenging to identify and respond to legitimate leads, potentially blocking databases.

2. False lead generation:

Bot attacks can reduce productivity and demoralize a company’s team by wasting time and money chasing possibilities that never exist.

3. Skewed analytics:

Bot activity can significantly impact a business by skewing lead generation and performance KPIs.

Therefore, it results in inappropriate marketing plans and predictions based on false information, which costs money and wastes opportunities.

4. Higher expenses:

When bots have access to HubSpot form submissions, they have the potential to artificially inflate the contact list.

Therefore, forcing a business into more expensive price levels when there is no actual benefit to the organization.

5. Decreased performance:

Bots can generate multiple automated form submissions, which can stress a HubSpot instance and website.

What indicates bots on HubSpot forms?

Organizations can help identify and guard against bot activity forms by monitoring HubSpot forms for bot indicators.

Here are a few indicators to watch for:

1. Quick form submission: Automated forms are filled out super fast, faster than a human could.

This is one way to determine if it’s a bot. Usually, people read or enter text more slowly than bots.

2. Timestamps: submissions might show odd timestamps.

For example, if there are multiple submissions late at night or during hours when nobody is expected to fill out forms, this might be a bot attack.

3. Data that does not make sense: Bots can enter irrelevant data, data that does not make sense, like strings of numbers where names are supposed to go, or random combinations of words that don’t look like anything on Earth.

4. Same submission: You begin to see multiple form submissions coming in with the same information.

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While duplicates are regular sometimes, a large number indicates a bot attack.

5. Non-matching form fields: Bots can enter wrong information in fields, such as numbers in the name section and incorrect emails in the mobile number field.

It occurs when bots do not recognize the type of information the forms expect.

6. Unusual IP addresses: Several submissions from IP addresses or IPs are from known bot IP addresses.

Submissions from IP addresses located in strange countries can also indicate bot activity.

7. Odd user-agent strings: A bot’s user-agent information can easily be recognized and indexed as a bot because it’s often nonstandard.

Strings that carry values telling the identity of the person submitting themselves as a bot are messaged in this regard.

The top 10 bot protection tools for HubSpot forms

Protecting your HubSpot forms is crucial to maintaining data integrity, generating high-quality leads, and safeguarding your marketing efforts.

Here’s how:

  1. CAPTCHA: Use HubSpot’s built-in CAPTCHA or integrate reCAPTCHA to verify human users. These tools present challenges that are easy for humans but hard for bots to solve.
  2. IP rate limiting: Set HubSpot to limit submissions from a single IP address within a specific timeframe. This prevents bots from submitting forms quickly while allowing legitimate users to access your forms.
  3. Hidden fields (Honeypot): Add invisible fields only bots would fill out. This clever trap allows you to catch and filter out automated submissions without compromising the user experience.
  4. JavaScript-based validation: Add client-side checks that bots can’t process, like mouse movement or keyboard event listeners.
  5. Multi-step forms: Breaking forms into multiple steps makes them more challenging for bots to fill out, potentially making longer forms more user-friendly.
  6. Time-based submission checks: Flag or reject submissions that are completed too quickly; these are often signs of bot activity.
  7. Form encryption: Use HTTPS and consider additional encryption methods to encrypt form data in transit, thereby protecting sensitive information from interception.
  8. Custom validation rules: Create rules specific to your form’s purpose to catch suspicious submissions, such as validating geographic-specific information.
  9. Third-party bot protection services, such as ClickPatrol, Can Be Integrated with specialized services for extra protection. These often utilize machine learning to quickly adapt to new bot tactics.
  10. Monitoring and Auditing: Keep an eye on form submissions and analytics to catch bot activity as it happens.

Safeguarding HubSpot forms from bot impacts

Safeguarding HubSpot forms from bot attacks is essential; it helps maintain data quality, save resources, and ensure the efficacy of marketing and sales campaigns.

It reduces the likelihood of bot-related issues by actively monitoring for the listed indicators and implementing the above safeguards.

Bot technologies are constantly evolving, and protecting against them is an ongoing task.

To keep your forms secure and functional, regularly examine and update security measures, stay current with emerging risks, and fully utilize HubSpot’s evolving security capabilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Can HubSpot Forms prevent all bot attacks?

    HubSpot offers various security features.

    However, no system can guarantee 100% protection against all bot attacks.

  • Will adding bot protection measures affect the user experience of my forms?

    Yes, measures like CAPTCHA can impact the user experience.

    However, many protection strategies work without affecting legitimate users.

    It is essential to strike a balance between security and usability.

  • Can bots bypass CAPTCHA?

    Yes, CAPTCHA can be effective with many bots.

    However, sophisticated bots can sometimes bypass it.

    This is why it is essential to implement a multi-layered approach for bot protection.

Abisola

Abisola

Meet Abisola! As the content manager at ClickPatrol, she’s the go-to expert on all things fake traffic. From bot clicks to ad fraud, Abisola knows how to spot, stop, and educate others about the sneaky tactics that inflate numbers but don’t bring real results.

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