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Thread: Spam

June 12th, 2009 #1

lexicon

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Spam
people are using the contact ad form to spam my users are getting messages like the following one:

Name: socdfhfvaey
Email: zvjjta@.com
Message: s9cC9d efvzbycvwsgo, mvzm, [link=http://.com/]odbnsvkkeefd[/link], http://.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My users aren't super annoyed but if my site becomes a spam portal they wont be for long.

help?

I'm not the only one either:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=259" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[url=http://MyUsedText.com]Buy and sell used textbooks![/url]
June 12th, 2009 #2

herb_

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Re: Spam
ain't that a bugger...

do you think it's from bots or manual spam.

or maybe it's from people just curious about the form and entering a bunch of aslkjhfasjh just to see how it works
June 13th, 2009 #3

lexicon

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Re: Spam
haha its possible one girl got 3 yesterday that's why she emailed me people tend to email me once they get over 3 in a day.

[url=http://MyUsedText.com]Buy and sell used textbooks![/url]
June 23rd, 2009 #4

planetsean

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Re: Spam
I see a potential hole that spammers can use to contact your sellers. If you view source on a listing page, you can clearly see the persons email address. A spam bot can read the source, grab the email address and off it goes.

We need a contact form for the sellers that maybe pulls the email address from the database since it's already stored from the registration and not actually have it present on the form.

Thoughts?
June 24th, 2009 #5

dcowgill

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Re: Spam
The email address has numbers/text mixed in with it so spam bots can't really figure it out. I plan on having it done another way without any sort of email address visible in the source in a future release.
June 24th, 2009 #6

planetsean

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Re: Spam

Originally Posted by dcowgill

I plan on having it done another way without any sort of email address visible in the source in a future release.

As I mentioned in the other thread, nice to hear you are working on improving this feature. Keep up the great work!
September 20th, 2009 #7

sport302

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Re: Spam

Originally Posted by Lexicon

people are using the contact ad form to spam my users are getting messages like the following one:

Name: socdfhfvaey
Email: zvjjta@.com
Message: s9cC9d efvzbycvwsgo, mvzm, [link=http://.com/]odbnsvkkeefd[/link], http://.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My users aren't super annoyed but if my site becomes a spam portal they wont be for long.

help?

I'm not the only one either:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=259" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is becoming more common the longer my site has been up. More and more emails just like the one above are showing up in the email boxes of ad posters from Spam Bots. Add The Numbers just does not seem to do the job of stopping spam very well.

One thing I have heard that seems to work well is simply asking a generic challenge question like "What color is the sky?" So if it is a Spam Bot instead of a person it will not know the answer is "Blue" then the email would be rejected.

Not sure how to implement this though, I have tried but can not get it to work.

Any thoughts?

Chad
October 18th, 2009 #8

sport302

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Re: Spam
Has any one come up with a better solution than "add the numbers" to stop spam bots from sending replies to ad posters? It is becoming more and more common on my own site. Just goofy replies to ads using random letters and numbers. The problem is they hit every single current ad posted.

I tried adding a hidden field using CSS to stop the spam bots, but they still get through to ad posters.

I just see this becoming a big turn off to ad posters if it gets to out of control.

Any ideas from anyone about how to stop the spam bots?

Thanks,

Chad
December 20th, 2009 #9

dcowgill

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Re: Spam
Version 2.9.3 will fix this or you can manually fix by reading this ClassiPress spam bot fix.