Possible issue with rental site

by umc

Posted: 12 years ago 18 replies

OFFLINE MARKETING

I don't have it rented yet, but I am getting a lot of nonsensical and foreign language spam being sent through my contact form. If I was paying for it, I'd get irritated. I've had three already today. Why would anyone do this anyway? The spam doesn't even have a point or make any sense.

Any way to stop it? Or maybe filter it out? I'm not the most knowledgeable on the subject. It isn't being sent through an autoresponder or anything, just a basic contact form to my gmail account.

#issue #rental #site

kebertt 12 years ago

Are you using wordpress? If so, there are a ton of plugins to prevent such spam.
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- umc 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by kebertt
  
  Are you using wordpress? If so, there are a ton of plugins to prevent such spam.
  
  Any specific plugins that you recommend? Thanks!
  
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WebSeeds 12 years ago

Do you have any form of security on the contact form? reCaptcha?
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mojo1

12 years ago

if you're using hostgator, you can also use the ip manager in your cpanel area to block ip addresses from being able to visit your site.

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umc

12 years ago

Yes, I'm using WordPress, and the theme has a contact form. I probably need to replace it with a form that has a captcha, or some fields that I could edit. I don't know why my brain cramped and I couldn't think of that myself, lol.

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WebSeeds

12 years ago

Originally Posted by umc

Ahh, in that case I'd reccomend using Contact Form 7, it functions with Captcha or Akismet.

It's very simple to use, when you go to edit the form, just make sure you copy both the code for the form AND the code for the e-mail. If you've never used it before, you'll see what I mean. When I first used it way back I remember forgetting to update all of my fields in the e-mail, and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't sending me all of the information. xD Rookie mistake, but that was long ago.

If you need help setting it up or have any questions, let me know!

EDIT:

Here is the link for Contact Form 7. WordPress › Contact Form 7 « WordPress Plugins

Install this plugin as well to generate a key for the captcha.

WordPress › Really Simple CAPTCHA « WordPress Plugins

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umc 12 years ago

Thanks, whoever is spamming me seems to be damping up their efforts. I still don't understand how it benefits them whatsoever, but they are starting to be more frequent as the day goes by, and they all forward to my phone, which is annoying.
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WebSeeds 12 years ago

Glad to help! I understand, that can be quite frustrating. Sometimes depending on the type of code your form accepts, they can hide some malicious code behind gibberish that you will never see.

A good tip though that i've learned over creating many a Wordpress', create an entirely new e-mail for the funneling of your contact form. A seperate g-mail works, that way it wont clog up your main. Though, I guess that won't solve your problem considering you need the updates. The Captcha should do that though!
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bryson 12 years ago

I had the same issue. I am using wp plugin custom contact form. My guess is the spam is ment for blog commenting and the software they are using is junk and can't tell the differnce in the forms..or I could be intensional.

A quick fix is to delete the message box if you have that option.
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mojo1 12 years ago

It just dawned on me from reading this that it's probably a competitor in your niche who's pretty pissed you're making a dent in their industry.
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- umc 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by mojo1
  
  It just dawned on me from reading this that it's probably a competitor in your niche who's pretty pissed you're making a dent in their industry.
  
  Not likely. I'm not making that much of a dent, lol. I hope to, but I'm still learning. I think it is just some sort of random spam bot, and I don't have anything protecting it, so thus the spam. I still don't understand what benefit random sentences that don't make much sense is, but I'll hand it to them, they have managed to pick out some keywords from one of my posts on the site and they're discussing the subject, however ridiculously.
  
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umc 12 years ago

Well $&%^!

I put the new contact form up with the captcha, and they've got it solved and still snuck spam through. My page views today have gone through the roof, and it looks like they are using various IP's to do this. So, blocking them does no good either. How the heck to I get rid of these azzholes? Within 9 seconds they hit all over my website, pretty much crawling every page and post. I can remove the contact form altogether, I guess, and just use my form through MailChimp, but I liked having the secondary contact form.

I just added another field with a dropdown that is required. I guess I'll see if they can manipulate that too.
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WebSeeds 12 years ago

Woah! That's some crazy stuff then.... as far as a motive, I can't think of one. But I would definately reccomend calling your hosting provider, and let them know whats going on. They should be able to help you from the backend and keep you protected!
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- umc 12 years ago
  
  Adding a dropdown box and check box to my form stopped it, for now anyway. I seem to be getting traffic to my handyman site referred by some replica watch site, among others. The IP keeps changing, and each time it goes through all of my pages and posts, searching I guess for a way in, probably until hitting my contact form. My page views have skyrocketed, but my bounce rate probably sucks, lol. Maybe once they stop seeing that they can easily get past my contact form, they will move on.
  
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  bryson 12 years ago
  
  I did a search for contact form spam and found out it is a common practice. The culprits will use a bot or hire scabs in foriegn countries to post manually. Based on reading the subissions I got, I would say I was hit by a bot.
  
  Solution: deleted my contact form plugin and installed theses plugins: Contact Form 7, Honeypot for CF7 and integrated the form with askimet.
  
  Problem solved.
  
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  Brandon Tanner 12 years ago
  
  If it's a spambot doing this, here's any easy solution that doesn't require using captcha...
  
  A spambot will always fill out all form fields on a page before clicking submit. So all you have to do is create an extra, hidden form field (which human visitors will never see, but the spambot will). And name it something that looks legitimate to a spambot, like "phone number". Then just add some conditional logic in your code that blocks the submission if the hidden form is filled out.
  
  Very simple solution... no @$%#^ captcha required!
  
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Steve Faber 12 years ago

look for the free secure contact form plugin for WP. I've been using iot for years and it works great. Very flexible, and obviously. it's free..
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- Orkhan Ibad 12 years ago
  
  Use Akismet and it will be ok. After this, all those spams will go to your Comments section in WP dashboard. From there, you can simply mass delete them.
  
  Orkhan
  
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Possible issue with rental site

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