Spectrum Computing

One of the downsides of our little website starting to get noticed is the amount of spam I receive through the 'Contact Us' link on the homepage. I'm getting at least 10 a day, and it's starting to cause some frustration.

I had considered simply turning the contact us form off in the phpBB control panel, but occasionally I do get legitimate messages.

Does anyone who is actively administrating a phpBB site know of a solution that they are using. You can't seem to add a Captcha and I can't find a suitable plugin to offer this functionality. It seems to be a fairly common problem.

Thanks all

You can try with a honeypot: https://gist.github.com/andrewlimaza/95 ... bfc8d535ff. Not the ultimate defense, but it's so easy to implement that it's worth to try.

Regards

PeterJ wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2019 2:58 pm Thanks all

1. Understandable
2. Yes it is a bit too useful to turn off. Disabling for guests won't have any real effect however
3. Multi answer: No , Yes and Yes

You have a PM anyway.

I think before joining the forum I did try the contact us button, but felt frustration because after using it an error message was displayed. I don't know if it is relatedto the spam, perhaps the soam caused it to malfunction?

spider wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:53 pm

PeterJ wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2019 2:58 pm Thanks all

You have a PM anyway.

Thanks very much [mention]spider[/mention]. Just reading it now.

holycross wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:02 am
I did try the contact us button, but felt frustration because after using it an error message was displayed.

Do you have a note of the error you were getting? Certainly by the numbers of messages that come through I don't think anyone else is having an issue. It's just the standard form provided with phpBB currently without any modifications.

I can imagine this is very frustrating, and know very little about how to combat this. Fortunately some organisations do, so I know what you should do... (ahem). You should get in touch with the .... Contact-Spam Crews.
sorry

PeterJ wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 6:13 am

holycross wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:02 am
I did try the contact us button, but felt frustration because after using it an error message was displayed.

Do you have a note of the error you were getting? Certainly by the numbers of messages that come through I don't think anyone else is having an issue. It's just the standard form provided with phpBB currently without any modifications.

Unfortunately no I don't remmber it...It happened weeks ago.

I got same situation: Japanese spammer sent about 30-60 messages. Resolved by pure captcha.

spider wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:53 pm

PeterJ wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2019 2:58 pm Thanks all

You have a PM anyway.

[mention]spider[/mention] thanks for all the information. I'm going to try installing the extension you mentioned. Tried replying to your PM but kept getting:

Your message couldn't be delivered. It appears that the email address you sent your message to wasn't found at the destination domain, or the recipient's mailbox is unavailable

PeterJ wrote: ↑Sat Aug 31, 2019 10:55 pm @spider thanks for all the information. I'm going to try installing the extension you mentioned. Tried replying to your PM but kept getting:

Your message couldn't be delivered. It appears that the email address you sent your message to wasn't found at the destination domain, or the recipient's mailbox is unavailable

Updated/Fixed and replied to the PM. Sorry about that! I knew I'd be bound to of missed a site or two when updating it.

Thanks to a lot of assistance from [mention]spider[/mention] I have now implemented a new 'Contact Us' plugin for phpBB. This won't impact registered forum users, but will hopefully reduce the amount of spam I receive. This form uses the same challenge question that the site registration includes. It only asks the challenge question if you are not logged in:

app.php/contactadmin

Excellent and you're very welcome.

As mentioned it is a sane offering in that a registered/logged in member is not forced to deal with a QA Challenge or Captcha, something 'some other forms' tend to have, so what is here now is about the best of both worlds really I think.

EDIT... Typo excess!