Contact form spam

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cannon303

Hi a contact form I have created has started getting strange spam. I call it strange because they don't add any hyperlinks, they aren't trying to sell anything and it's nothing offensive. All fields are correctly filled apart from the address field and telephone field which are filled with random sentences as is the enquiry field. I've googled some of the text and the same text appears as comments on Wordpress blogs so I think it's automated spam. Here's some text

You hold special plceas in our hearts too

etc

Can anyone tell me what is the point of this spam? What are they trying to do?

Thanks

root

No point other than they do it for various reasons, I would say that this type of spam is probing your form, what type of back end have you running this form? Do you blindly accept all POST fields or only use a whitelist of allowed fields?

WebDesignPhx

cannon303;1305811 wrote:
Hi a contact form I have created has started getting strange spam. I call it strange because they don't add any hyperlinks, they aren't trying to sell anything and it's nothing offensive. All fields are correctly filled apart from the address field and telephone field which are filled with random sentences as is the enquiry field. I've googled some of the text and the same text appears as comments on Wordpress blogs so I think it's automated spam. Here's some text

etc

Can anyone tell me what is the point of this spam? What are they trying to do?

Thanks

Add CAPTCHA to your site. That will help prevent this... I add CAPTCHA to all my contact forms.

mariamincey64

yes i agree Web Design Phx answer, answer is a CAPTCHA, If you are getting an awful lot of spam, one method is to deploy Akismet.

cannon303

Not sure about a white list, I do spam check for correct input, illegal characters, not exceeding certain character counts etc so that might be an added layer of security I could add. Thanks for the suggestion. CAPTCHA fields: I dropped them a few years ago as more than occasionally they would deny processing of legitimate mail. Is it reliable?

Carlos_Moulton

Spamming is the sending or adding of an unsolicited posts or content. Yes you can add captcha or random security questions.

cannon303

Carlos Moulton;1306441 wrote:
Spamming is the sending or adding of an unsolicited posts or content. Yes you can add captcha or random security questions.

Thanks for that pearl of wisdom there Carlos.

John_marks

I agree with carlos moulton, Spamming is the sending or adding of an unsolicited posts or content. Yes you can add captcha or random security questions.