My client is now receiving lots of spam emails through the form on his website. The site in question was constructed in the days before responsiveness became a big thing and the client doesn’t want to go the extra mile for now, but was asking if there was any way to stop the porn/gambling/finance/drugs emails coming through by retro-fitting something.
With this in mind (and I do realise that it wouldn’t stop a little man behind a screen typing stuff in), how easy would it be to add something similar to Captcha to the page.
The form was done using Tim’s PHP Feedback Form action. I see one of the options in the action says ‘add a spam trap?’ but I don’t know what this does or if it would be of any help. All of his emails seem to be coming from different sources.
Hi Trev,
The Action offers two options top try and combat form spam;
The spam trap feature creates a hidden field that is made available to scripts (but not humans) that want to fill out your form. If the PHP finds anything in the field when the form is submitted then the message is rejected as spam.
The Action can append the sender’s IP address to the message. Assuming you get two or more spam messages from the same (or similar) IP address you can block these, again, using a feature in the Action. A message from a blocked IP address is simply ignored.
Both of these can help reduce form spam you get but if your client’s email address is publicly available then you’ll be fighting a losing battle as you’ll get spam directly to the email address rather than through the web site.
Regards,
Tim.
On 13 Apr 2015, at 17:20, Trevreav wrote:
The form was done using Tim’s PHP Feedback Form action. I see one of the options in the action says ‘add a spam trap?’ but I don’t know what this does or if it would be of any help. All of his emails seem to be coming from different sources.
one of the options in the action says ‘add a spam trap?’ but I don’t know what this does or if it would be of any help
What this does is create an invisible (to humans) text field and when a 'bot fills in the form and adds an entry in it then the submission will be rejected.
This is a great first step to take but as you suggest will not filter out lowly paid folk filling them in manually.
There is a backlash against Captcha as there is great feeling that it puts off more than the 'bots.
My advice would be to go with the Spam Trap first of all and see what happens. You also have the option to Track and Block IP addresses so if you are getting a lot of traffic from particular IPs then use that too.
He doesn’t seem to be getting any directly from the info on the website (it does have anti-spam used on it), just from the web form itself.
I’ll give that a try and see how it goes - however, I’d still be interested in knowing how to incorporate Captcha, or a picture of sorts on there also if anyone can be of help.
Thanks
Trev
On 13 Apr 2015, at 17:57, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:
Hi Trev,
The Action offers two options top try and combat form spam;
The spam trap feature creates a hidden field that is made available to scripts (but not humans) that want to fill out your form. If the PHP finds anything in the field when the form is submitted then the message is rejected as spam.
The Action can append the sender’s IP address to the message. Assuming you get two or more spam messages from the same (or similar) IP address you can block these, again, using a feature in the Action. A message from a blocked IP address is simply ignored.
Both of these can help reduce form spam you get but if your client’s email address is publicly available then you’ll be fighting a losing battle as you’ll get spam directly to the email address rather than through the web site.
Regards,
Tim.
On 13 Apr 2015, at 17:20, Trevreav wrote:
The form was done using Tim’s PHP Feedback Form action. I see one of the options in the action says ‘add a spam trap?’ but I don’t know what this does or if it would be of any help. All of his emails seem to be coming from different sources.
Thanks for that David - I’m going to give that a go tomorrow and then wait and see……………
Trev
On 13 Apr 2015, at 18:05, DeltaDave email@hidden wrote:
one of the options in the action says ‘add a spam trap?’ but I don’t know what this does or if it would be of any help
What this does is create an invisible (to humans) text field and when a 'bot fills in the form and adds an entry in it then the submission will be rejected.
This is a great first step to take but as you suggest will not filter out lowly paid folk filling them in manually.
There is a backlash against Captcha as there is great feeling that it puts off more than the 'bots.
My advice would be to go with the Spam Trap first of all and see what happens. You also have the option to Track and Block IP addresses so if you are getting a lot of traffic from particular IPs then use that too.
If the Spam Trap doesn’t help then Mike B’s easiForm action can help with the easiCaptcha part of things but your hosting will have to be IonCube friendly.
John, David, Tim, thanks for the pointers on this.
We’re going to go the anti-spam route (in Tim’s action) to start with and see how this goes, and turning on the IP address thingy for blocking as we get down the line.
Fingers crossed.
Thanks
Trev
On 13 Apr 2015, at 18:53, John Robinson email@hidden wrote:
I have used the easibase form action. In my opinion worth the money. No more shoe ads for my customer.
John
Hello all, just an update on this. The anti-spam tick box has worked a treat so far and the client is very happy. He’s still getting spam from a couple of IP addresses and I’m just about to add them into the action’s filters.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m assuming you separate the addresses with a comma and a space? i.e.:
XX.XXX.XX.XXX, XX.XXX.XX.XXX
Once again, many thanks to you all fro the help, much appreciated.