OK, I see how to add that to the php contact form action. How do I know the ISP address numbers to block if I have an email address and domain name?
I noticed there are some numbers filled in for ISP addresses to block that I haven’t ever typed in. What are those sites?
Many thanks!
A word of caution, if the person you are seeking to block is on a “normal” ISP Then the IP’s are allocated dynamically and can change on a fairly regular basis depending on the ISP and the configuration of the router etc.
Therefore blocking a single IP may not deliver the solution you are seeking…
Thanks for the information and warning. I looked up the emailer’s domain’s ISP at Whois and entered that because I had deleted their previous messages. So, that should work, but maybe only for a short time? And from now on if I do receive anything from them, I’ll have the current ISP numbers supplied by Freeway. Thanks very much for the help!
Let me know how you get on with the IP blocking as I can, if needed, extend this to ban specific email addresses, domains or keywords.
Regards,
Tim.
On 4 Dec 2012, at 11:43, KDE wrote:
Thanks for the information and warning. I looked up the emailer’s domain’s ISP at Whois and entered that because I had deleted their previous messages. So, that should work, but maybe only for a short time? And from now on if I do receive anything from them, I’ll have the current ISP numbers supplied by Freeway. Thanks very much for the help!
Nothing at all. When a blocked IP address gets rejected by the PHP Feedback Form Action the spammer will see exactly the same success page as a regular user for exactly this reason. Without an error the spammer has no reason to change their email or IP address.
Blocking spammers is always going to be a cat and mouse game but (IMHO) it is always good to have the tools to actively block users wherever you can.
Regards,
Tim.
On 4 Dec 2012, at 20:41, DeltaDave wrote:
Whats to stop them making up email addresses and rendering that useless.
An IP address that is blocked will not redirect to the error page and will give the impression of a successful submission. - Didn’t know that. Great idea.
I can see why it is a good idea to not let the blacklisted emailer know that they have been banned so that they cannot make changes to get through, but I would kind of like them to know that I never read their message.
The information you have given is working fine for me, but maybe for future developments there should be an option to give an error message?
An IP address that is blocked will not redirect to the error page and will give the impression of a successful submission. - Didn’t know that. Great idea.
D
Tim,
Agree with principle of directing a blocked IP to the Success page… as long as the Form “owner” has visibility to the transaction.
Hi John,
Thanks for the feedback on this. I’ll have a think about this and see how best the Action could report it. The easiest thing would be to just redirect the email to another email address or change the subject line so that they could be easily filtered by the recipient. At the moment the blocked user will see the success page even though the email was never sent.
Regards,
Tim.
On 5 Dec 2012, at 23:35, ejw wrote:
Agree with principle of directing a blocked IP to the Success page… as long as the Form “owner” has visibility to the transaction.
If you give your contact page a PHP extension (I know I always tell people not to when using the Action but…) then you can echo the user’s IP address directly to the page in a friendly warning about spam. For example; http://www.freewayactions.com/product.php?id=con
And here’s the PHP code I use on that page;
<?php
$ip=@$REMOTE_ADDR;
echo "<p><b>Please note</b>: your IP address has been recorded in an effort to stop spam ($ip)</p>";
?>
Incidentally I think I have a stalker as I saw this blacked out van parked outside my house yesterday;
Gulp!
Regards,
Tim.
On 5 Dec 2012, at 23:58, DeltaDave wrote:
I am assuming that you have a ‘stalker’ that is doing this.
I think that I would put a message on my success page naming and shaming them and tell them that their submission is automatically trashed.