Spam feedback in surveys: Keep survey data clean and avoid unwanted feedback!

More and more spam

According to a study by two former Yahoo employees, Justin Rao and David Reiley, spam causes more damage than car theft. Unwanted data junk costs more than 14 billion euros every year. Users worldwide spend more than 500 million hours sifting through and eliminating spam. But spam is not only a major nuisance in the mailbox. Survey data in online polls are also increasingly affected by spam, i.e. unwanted feedback.

Spam feedback is annoying and jeopardises the results of your survey

A student recently asked me how she could protect herself from spam during an online survey for her bachelor's thesis and that she found hardly any information about it online. We then went together to search for answers on the World Wide Web, and in fact: anyone who is explicitly not familiar with the subject will find little to no information about it. One reason for this could be that these are more technical than organizational challenges, which not many survey solutions currently on the market seem to have addressed. QuestionPro offers countless ways to keep databases clean of unwanted feedback spam!

Simple and proven: CAPTCHA spam protection

A simple but proven protection against annoying data spam, which is often not caused by humans but by so-called "bots", i.e. robots, is the CAPTCHA method. At the beginning of the survey, the respondents have to enter a string of characters shown on a graphic into an input field provided for this purpose. If the input and the character string in the graphic do not match, the survey cannot be continued.

In QuestionPro, you will find the captcha function as a standard question type that you can simply place at the end of your online questionnaire.

Password protection for online surveys:
One password for everyone or a separate password for each survey participant

If the CAPTCHA method alone is not enough for you, you can also protect your online surveys with a password. QuestionPro has an integrated mail function with which you can invite participants to take part in your survey by e-mail. It is possible to send a global password together with the survey URL, which is the same for all participants. This means: everyone receives one and the same password with which they must authenticate themselves before answering the questions. However, it is also possible to automatically generate a separate password for each individual person from the system and send it by e-mail.

You decide who can take part:
No participation without an invitation

If you only want to give a defined group of people access to your online survey, QuestionPro offers an imaginative way here: Only those who receive an email with the link to the online survey directly from the system and click on the link from this email can take part in the survey. If someone clicks on this link from a forwarded e-mail, participation is not possible. Read in our Help Centre how exactly you can send your potential survey participants to an online survey by e-mail trail (for them the use is free of charge)

→ Help Center

Access via Facebook account

Give your survey participants the option to authenticate themselves via their Facebook account. This is a particularly useful option if you publish your survey on this social media platform.

Prevent filling out multiple times

Take advantage of so-called "anti-ballot box stuffing" with QuestionPro. This method prevents you from filling out an online questionnaire more than once by comparing the IP address of the data sender.

Without detours from the survey to the database

Even if it sounds mundane at first: QuestionPro has integrated SSL encryption. This means that the data is transferred securely from the survey participants' input device to their database, without it being possible to manipulate or view it on the way there.

And even more technology for even more data quality and security in online surveys

With QuestionPro, technical security options are available to keep your survey database spam-free and clean, such as SAML Assertion Single Sign-On, a secure XML-based method for exchanging authentication and authorisation information, as well as the integrated HMAC-SHA1 authentication or the DES (Data Encryption Standard) encryption algorithm.

If you have any questions or suggestions about avoiding spam in online surveys and would like to know how to avoid unwanted feedback, please contact us! We are happy to answer all your questions about our survey applications. You can reach us via our contact page. We are looking forward to a dialogue with you!

1:1 live online demo:
Survey software QuestionPro

Would you like to learn more about QuestionPro? We would be happy to show you the functions and question types of the survey software in a personal 1:1 live online demo. Arrange an individual appointment with one of our survey specialists now.

Create surveys for free with the professional and web-based survey software QuestionPro

You have any questions or suggestions? We look forward to your inquiry! Simply use the contact formto get in touch. Register now for free and create your first online survey with QuestionPro.

KEYWORDS OF THIS BLOG POST

spam | Feedback | Survey | avoid | prevent