Block bots from public forms before launch - shippingszn launch readiness

Public forms are doors bots can walk through without an account. If they can submit freely, they will fill your waitlist with spam, burn SMS/email credits, scrape paid APIs, or bury real leads under junk.

A polished launch can still get wrecked by a public form with no bot guard. The app looks fine until the first traffic spike turns into 500 spam contacts, SMS pumping, or an AI endpoint bill.

Owner verification required: Bot protection has to be verified against live public forms and provider token validation. The scanner can look for rate-limit or CAPTCHA libraries, but it cannot prove every unauthenticated form rejects missing tokens and survives repeated submissions.

The Launch Fix Kit keeps scan-specific findings, file and line evidence, AI-builder punch-list tasks, and verification steps tied to the paid report.

Inventory every unauthenticated form or POST route, not just the contact form.
Put CAPTCHA or Cloudflare Turnstile on public marketing/contact/waitlist/feedback forms that accept arbitrary submissions.
Keep rate limits on every public write endpoint even when CAPTCHA is present. CAPTCHA slows bots; rate limits cap damage.
Verify bot tokens server-side before writing to the database, sending email/SMS, or calling a paid API.
Test missing-token, invalid-token, repeated-submit, and real-browser success paths before launch.

Run the scanner | Unlock Launch Fix Kit

Canonical URL: https://shippingszn.com/i/public-form-abuse/