Contact form spam prevention methods

Improving your contact form and guest book spam prevention

Improving Your Website Contact Form and Guest Book Spam Prevention

By Hmmm... on 8th September, 2011
3 comments

It always amuses me that so called SEO 'experts/companies' resort to Spamming people to try to generate work!

Here is a recent example from a website 'contact form':

"Cecelia Maloney
ceceliamaloney2222@gmail.com
0120120120
We are interested to increase traffic to your website, please get back to us in order to discuss the possibility in further detail."

A quick Google shows these are well known spammers so I have no problem listing their 'details' here.

There is a chance they are not really interested in SEO but just trying to elicit a response to see if the email address is active - either way I recommend you NEVER reply. A number of 'form' spammers just like to try and submit dodgy links - malicious and/or spam.

It seems Gmail email addresses are getting very popular with these spammers - and in my experience they are nearly all coming from Indian ISPs.

Once these spammers have the URL of your contact 'form' or 'guest book' they regularly return directly to the page to offer their services!

Recently I've started to maintain an .htaccess file so that I can manually deny access to these visitors - this stops them from even viewing my website.

This is what they get presented with if they try to return to my site:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

My .htaccess file denying these spammers access currently looks like this:

order allow,deny

deny from 122.173.

deny from 122.167.

deny from 122.163.

deny from 122.183.

deny from 122.161.

deny from 122.177.

deny from 122.160.

deny from 122.172.

deny from 122.169.

deny from 121.247.167

deny from 94.100.25.52

deny from 117.200.162

deny from 182.68.

deny from 182.68.94

deny from 182.64.239

allow from all

This works well for me - I guess they move on to easier pickings and I only have to add a new IP address every few months.

Please Note:

Obviously, if you need your website to be visible to certain countries (mostly India in my IP examples above) then you would need to be *very careful* using this method as it would be very easy to block legitimate visitors. Especially where I am using IP masks rather than full addresses.

If you are using Freeola's Standard formmail script you simply have to add this line to your form code which will add your visitors IP address to any submitted messages:

<input type="hidden" name="env_report" value="yes">

A quick Google on the address will then show you if it is a problem IP !

Just thought I would pass this on in case others are troubled by similar form spam, or if you have your own tips please let me know :¬)

There have been 3 comments submitted by users.

	gutsy commented on 5th January, 2012 Hi Hmmm Excellent tip - I'm going to show my ignorance here but how do you gain access to the .htaccess file to input the message and denied IP addresses. Is this something for the relative novice to attempt?
	Hmmm... commented on 20th October, 2012 Hi gutsy, sorry for the very late reply - I'm afraid Freeola's systems don't let people know when there's a question. You just need notepad or a similar plain text editor to create an .htaccess file. You then need an FTP client (I use Filezilla which is free and works well) to upload the file. NB. If you are using a Freeola InstantPro site this facility isn't available to you. If you haven't given up on this then the Freeola forum is the best place to ask questions :¬) Regards, Hmmm... www.hmmm.ip3.co.uk
	Hmmm... commented on 20th October, 2012 This is still working well for me. I thought I would update this article with my current IP list for the spammers that have found me: order allow,deny deny from 122.173. deny from 122.167. deny from 122.163. deny from 122.183. deny from 122.161. deny from 122.162. deny from 122.177. deny from 122.160. deny from 122.172. deny from 122.169. deny from 122.180. deny from 121.247.167 deny from 94.100.25.52 deny from 117.200.162 deny from 182.68. deny from 182.68.94 deny from 182.64.239 deny from 182.64. deny from 46.21.144.176 deny from 109.73.68.18 deny from 193.105.210.125 deny from 109.200.2.42 deny from 109.73.68.18 deny from 91.207.7.254 deny from 146.0.73.231 deny from 195.182.22.3 deny from 178.137.202.244 deny from 108.178.53.114 deny from 91.237.249.69 deny from 141.105.66 deny from 141.105.67 deny from 31.192.104.188 deny from 188.143.232.33 deny from 91.237.249.182 allow from all Hmmm... http://www.hmmm.ip3.co.uk

Printing Article

You have the option to print this article with or without comments. Comments are a way of providing visitors like you with the ability to give feedback to a specific article.

Print without comments
Print with comments

take a look at what our customers are saying...

10/10

Over the years I've become very jaded after many bad experiences with customer services, you have bucked the trend. Polite and efficient from the Freeola team, well done to all involved.

...great to have the backup of Freeola and the excellent staff...

I recently purchased a new computer and had initial problems getting it set up to receive and send e-mails etc and I spoke to you on several occasions and we finally got it sorted by a joint effort. For those amongst us who are not up to degree standard in computing it's great to have the back up of Freeola and the excellent staff on my side at a time of crisis with the PC.

freeola & get dotted are passionate about help & support

Freeola is a UK internet service provider offering the best value and extensive free services. Please compare our domain name registration prices or check out our UK high speed internet access. If you are in business please see examples of our free hosting at Freeola.com/customer-sites.