Bad Words Filter

[russellr]

Hi,

I'm already using all other available Spam protection features in FormMail, incl. reverse capture

Really? So, Reverse Captcha is not catching these bots, or do you think a human is entering the spam manually?

If you think it's a bot getting around your Reverse Captcha, I'd really like to see how you've set it up.

I might be able to make a suggestion about how to improve it.

I know this is an "arms race", but bots haven't beaten Captcha yet and I'd be very surprised if they're getting around Reverse Captcha in any generic way.

[nadworks]

Thanks Russell. I'm petty sure this is not a bot. Reverse captcha works fine.
Nevertheless this has been happening on almost all domains/websites I am running for clients - messages promoting an SEO service, offering to get you "on the first page of Google" etc.

Feel free to check out the form:
http://www.nadworks.com/contact.htm

Thanks!!

[russellr]

Hi,

Yes, your Reverse Captcha seems to be OK.

So, I agree that it's unlikely to be a bot that's hitting the site(s).

I wonder if we can prove it?

Does the spam fill in all the fields including "firma" and "tel"?

I wonder if the fact that you have your Reverse Captcha fields set in Exclude in mail_options is a factor.

A well written bot would see that and ignore those fields.

Also, a field named "the-message" would likely be filled in automatically, but "firma" is probably not going to be.

I'm just looking for evidence that completely rules out a bot.

In any case, you can use CHMOD000's code to implement a "bad words" filter.

[nadworks]

Thanks, Russell.
The only mandatory fields are "realname" and "email" (nor even the message field).
I'll try re-naming the message field as you suggested.

[nadworks]

Just a quick update:

We have found the culprit. It's a company called "National Positions" (nationalpositions.com). A quick web search shows a massive amount of spam complaints and discussions comments about known form and forum spam coming from this company/person/domain.

http://spedr.com/16hl5

[russellr]

Hi,

OK, so you think they hire people to manually enter spam?

We get posts on these forums that very much look like someone manually entering them.

I generally have to delete several per day.

As you know, it's not trivial to register for our forums (Captcha has to be solved and an email received and actioned).

I also receive a very small amount of spam each week despite our Challenge-Response system. There's almost no way this could be automated - a human is involved in the process somewhere.

I'm open minded on solutions to these problems.

We're definitely going to implement a email address checker (thanks for the working code CHMOD000).

And, if we can figure out a way to make a "bad words" filter safe to use, we'll do that too.

[nadworks]

I didn't think (or even suggest) anything. I was simply filling in a few gaps from my earlier post and letting you know where my problem originates from. That's all.

[russellr]

Hi,

That's OK, I was just responding to your additional information with more.

It's a journey we're all on.

[Dingbaticus]

Russell,
don't want to seem pushy, but has there been any development on this issue since it was last posted ?

It would be a great add-on!

[russellr]

Hi,

Last post was 4 hours before yours!

No, we haven't begun designing the code for this feature.

The problem is not getting to block submissions - the problem is making sure it doesn't block legitimate submissions.

We always assume web site owners care about their customers and prospects as much as we do.