KaratEmail: Putting a nail in FormMail’s coffin

A catalyst for change: Hundreds of forms were attacked, tens of thousands of emails were sent, email accounts were overwhelmed and shut down, and business processes ground to a halt. On one cold February morning our Web team discovered that the our good friend FormMail was neither good nor a friend. After more than a decade of using the renowned FormMail script, we found the immediate need to better handle form submissions to reduce spam, increase security and build on the functionality of FormMail all while maintaining the simplicity that made FormMail such an incredible and widely used script. To satisfy these needs, our team built a new form submissions handler called KaratEmail that could replace FormMail in an entirely passive manner all while vastly improving on the power and functionality of the script. This poster session looked at the features that we knew needed to duplicate, the surprises we faced as well as the benefits that were added to make this a success for our university.