contact us box getting spam

[SJ77]

Hi

I am getting a lot of spam lately sent to our email via the contact us box.

Anyone have any luck at stopping this?

Thank you 🙂

[Norbee.]

I didnt get any spam. But you can make a little hook and put a reCAPTCHA there 😄 

[Daniel F]

Recapcha is already part of the form for guests. 

Is the spam from guests or registered members ?

[BertT]

Solving the problem, you need the IP address of the guest who writes spam in Сontact

Customization -> Emails -> Contact form
add to the right place

{$member->ip_address}

This will help you quickly block the spammer.

[SJ77]

it's guests. They are getting around it somehow.

Thank you

[BertT]

Поэтому я предложил вам добавить IP-адрес в ответном письме на форуме.
И когда вы получите письмо от гостя, вы узнаете его IP-адрес и можете заблокировать его, если вам это нужно.
Нет другой защиты от реальных людей.

[SJ77]

This was helpful. In case anyone else wants to do this but is having trouble with the Russian language in the instructions above, here is my English tutorial

1. In ACP click themes
2. under appearance click emails
3. find the template for contact form (page 2 for me)

replace the first line entirely with this

{$email->language->addToStack("email_contact_form", FALSE)}   {$member->ip_address}

Thank you  🙂

[Daniel F]

What’s the point of adding the IP address to the email? Won’t spam content which passed the captcha , still be sent?

[SJ77]

30 minutes ago, Daniel F said:

What’s the point of adding the IP address to the email? Won’t spam content which passed the captcha , still be sent?

Ban the ip address I assume. Unless you're telling me banned addresses can still access the contact us box? D'oh!!

[BertT]

Было очень полезно узнать сразу после получения письма IP-адрес отправителя и другие данные, а также это в настройках профиля участника форума.

Например, вот так:

Windows

Текущее устройство

веб-браузер

Последние авторизации

This will help in fighting spam on your forum.
Because no captcha protects you from a real person.
Only ban IP addresses, though not for long but reliably)

[Daniel F]

Yes, the contact us page, but also the warnings, privacy, and guidelines are excluded from the banned ip check.
You'll have to ban somebody on  the firewall level if you don't want to allow them to access the page at all.

[Black Tiger]

I mostly ban a complete ip range with .htaccess because often it are ranges from datacenters like OVH or other dedi's.

So that's an option too.

[SJ77]

alright, nothing is working. Getting spam up the wazooo!!

Maybe someone should make a plugin that puts a bit more security behind this before it sends.  Validation questions or something.

Thank you 🙂

[gabs007]

Maybe it's not a final solution, either, but what I did was to register in one of those free form services: zoho forms, jotform etc.

Create a form there and direct your contact form to that service instead of the integrated IPS contact form, and they will take care of the spam. 
Free services can handle up to 100 contacts a month, which was enough for me at that time.

[SJ77]

On 5/19/2019 at 10:48 AM, gabs007 said:

Maybe it's not a final solution, either, but what I did was to register in one of those free form services: zoho forms, jotform etc.

Create a form there and direct your contact form to that service instead of the integrated IPS contact form, and they will take care of the spam. 
Free services can handle up to 100 contacts a month, which was enough for me at that time.

Argh, I would likely need a lot more than 100.

I get that many spam messages per day at least.

[Millipede]

Have you tried

 My forum is only small and quiet but CleanTalk has stopped a load of spam. I've only had 3 human spammers register and none use the contact form.

[Joel R]

I was reading an article the other day that said one measure of your community's success is how many trolls you attract.  So ... Congrats? Be grateful that you're blessed with spam and trolls.  Or something.  🤣

Apparently the path to success for community admins is through mountains of spam.  

[tonyv]

3 hours ago, Joel R said:

I was reading an article the other day that said one measure of your community's success is how many trolls you attract.  So ... Congrats? Be grateful that you're blessed with spam and trolls.  Or something.  🤣

Apparently the path to success for community admins is through mountains of spam.  

Always looking for that silver lining, Joel.  You're supposed to be telling us how forums are dying and how fb/inst, twit, and snapped chat are the best. 

[ahc]

After fighting spam for months, we just decided to disable the form.  Been with Invision since 2017 and never received a single email or support ticket that wasn't spam from that link, so it's not much of a loss for us.  Wish there was better spam protection in place.