Mailforms and spam

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The last few weeks I get an enormous ammount of spam from topsites's mailform (the contact form of the site)

It appears that there are spam bots that are able to detect a 'contact us' form, so they use it to post information to you.

Today alone I got 10 mails for spammers that used this form, so I guess I should do something about that.

My first ideas is to change the names of the variables, change the path to the contact page, and add an ip tracker with abillity to ban ips (but I guess this wont work as spammers allways use dynamic ips)

Do you have some ideas to add to this? had you ever faced a problem like that?

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I prevented spam like this with the last month,

there are two kind of spammers:
-  a kind of injection (adding extra addresses to the mail header)
- mail spammer sending mails to the owner via external program's

(I hope my explanation is clear)

the first is easy to prevent with

Code:

$email = preg_replace("/\r\n/", "", $_POST['Email']);

the second is tricky:
use some captcha validation like: http://www.webdigity.com/index.php?action=tutorial;code=17

I tried also something else here:
http://www.buitenspelen.eu/contact.php

not the checkbox, the name of this checkbox is everytime different. This value can be validated during execution

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not the checkbox, the name of this checkbox is everytime different. This value can be validated during execution

That's very smart. And how you understand which is the right variable? With session or you create the var name from a date or something?

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not the checkbox, the name of this checkbox is everytime different. This value can be validated during execution

That's very smart. And how you understand which is the right variable? With session or you create the var name from a date or something?

Yes, a session is holding some random string generator, I think this way is much more user friendly...

Hi All,

New member, I just stumbled across your great site.  I to had problems with spammers using a mailform. I got his ISP from Cpanel and put a "ban_id" in the code.  But then more came so I needed a better script.  I found this one here and it works wonderfully.

http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/secure-php-form-mailer-script/comment-page-17/

I have no connection whatsoever with the script or scriptwriter, just like to help people stop spammers.

take care

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Well Chain, it is ok even if you wrote the script, as it is relevant to what we talk here

Looks like a complexed script anyway, but if it works I guess it worths a try

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y

Hi All,

New member, I just stumbled across your great site.  I to had problems with spammers using a mailform. I got his ISP from Cpanel and put a "ban_id" in the code.  But then more came so I needed a better script.  I found this one here and it works wonderfully.

http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/secure-php-form-mailer-script/comment-page-17/

I have no connection whatsoever with the script or scriptwriter, just like to help people stop spammers.

take care

yes its a nice form mail script with a lot ogf features which are not available in other mailscripts.
Badpoints:
no-chance for html mail
a very simple captcha image



For sure good enough for people without the ability to write their own mail scripts

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