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Hence with this article, i aim to provide you with all the essential $ actionable Drupal security measure to secure your sites. If you follow ed these measures diligently, you are bound to enhance your website’s security. But, before we start with the measures, let’s take a look at the Drupal hacking statistics. After which, we will take on Drupal security practices one-by-one. Protecting emails from spam messages in Drupal is crucial to maintaining the security and usability of your websites. Here is the step-by-step guide to safeguarding your email addresses and reducing spam :
Step 1:- Obfuscate Email Addresses
- Why directly displaying email addresses on a websites can make them easy targets for the spam bots that scrape websites for the email addresses.
- How you can obfuscate email addresses by using javascript, Css, or special characters.
- Use entities or javascript-based obfuscate technique to hide the email addresses in the source code.
Step 2 :- Use Drupal’s Built-in Email Protection
- Why Drupal offers some built-in mechanisms to protect email addresses.
- How Use mailto: links instead of directly displaying the email. Drupal automatically encodes email addresses in mailto: links.
- In your content, use [email protected] or the mailto format to automatically encode it:
Step 3 :- Enable spam filtering on Contact forms
- Why Spam submissions can include emails, which might lead to spam emails.
- How Implement custom validation or use honeypot techniques as discussed earlier for stopping spam submissions.
Step 4 :- Add Captcha to Email Forms
- Why CAPTCHA is an effective tool to prevent automated bots from submitting forms that contain email fields.
- How If using Drupal 8 or 9, the CAPTCHA module is available, but for Drupal 7, you can add CAPTCHA through custom code.
- Add a CAPTCHA field to your forms to ensure only humans can submit emails.
Step 5 :- Use a Contact Form Instead of Direct Email Links
- Why Replacing direct email links with contact forms prevents email addresses from being exposed.
- How Create a contact form that users fill out instead of displaying your email address. Navigate to Structure > Contact forms.
- Create a new form and customize it to your needs.
- Use the form's built-in email delivery options to send messages to the appropriate recipient.
Step 6 :- Implement Honeypot for Email Forms
- Why Adding a honeypot field can trick spam bots into revealing themselves.
- How Add a hidden field in your form and validate it.
- Add a honeypot field to your email forms and reject submissions if the field is filled out.
Step 7 :- Limit Email Form Submissions
- Why Limiting the number of submissions from a single IP address within a certain timeframe can reduce spam.
- How Track form submissions by IP address and enforce a limit.
- Implement IP tracking as shown earlier in the Drupal 7 spam prevention guide.
Step 8 :- Enable Content Moderation
- Why Content that includes emails should be moderated before being published to ensure it doesn't contain spam.
- How Use Drupal’s content moderation features to review submissions containing emails before they go live.
- Go to Structure > Content types.
- Configure the content type to require moderation.
- Set up a workflow where content is reviewed before publication.
Step 9 :- Prevent Emails in User-generated Content
- Why Spam often comes from user-generated content that includes email addresses.
- How Disallow email addresses in certain content types or fields.
- Use hook_form_alter() to add validation that checks for email addresses and removes or flags them.
Step 10 :- Educate Users on Safe Email Practices
- Why Educating users can help prevent the posting of email addresses in ways that can lead to spam.
- How Provide guidelines or notices in relevant areas of your site.
- Display a message near comment sections or contact forms advising users not to post email addresses publicly.
