Spam from both email addresses and forms on websites is a problem that’s ongoing, despite the best efforts of the spam filters your email-host provides. With the growth of AI, this is increasing even faster than previously.
Providing a direct email link on your website makes it very convenient for potential clients to reach you as many users prefer these links so they retain their “sent” version of the email. But these links also make it super-easy for spammers to email you. You can mark these spammers as “spam” and it may slow them down—but not by much as they can easily use another email address in the future.
Providing only a form on your website can slow the spammers down as they’ll need to fill out all the obligatory fields and you can add a captcha to block the robots. The downside of this is that the sent email actually comes from your domain and to mark any form-sent emails as spam would end up sending all your form-sent emails to spam (and put your domain into spam filters generally). The best solution for forms on a WordPress website is to use a plugin like Akismet to filter out most of the spam.
Incoming mail from a form should have a note at the bottom of it that lets you know that it has been generated from the form so if you have both a form and a direct email link, check the email itself to see which source is creating the spam you are receiving.
To use Akismet, upload the plugin, activate it and follow the steps to get an API key that you enter into the setup process. You can configure the plugin to hold the suspected-spam for your review or to trash the worst spam without having to look at it.
The very oldest and actually most foolproof method to eliminate spam is to only post an email address on your website like this: yourname [at] yourdomain [dot] com.
It means users have to enter the email address manually into the email app, bit by bit (or type it all in, possibly with errors) and it adds a layer of tedium but those who really want to reach you will probably understand the reason and make the effort.
