How to create a copy for the senfer?

[tt]

Hi,

I like this script a lot. It does almost everything I need, except that I don't know how or it doesn't have an option to send a copy of the form results/output to the sender (my user).

Any ideas?

Jose.

[russellr]

Hi Jose,

No, this cannot be done without breaking the security.

If FormMail let you do this, then spammers could use it as a Spam Gateway.

You need to use an autoresponder on your email server or something similar.

[tt]

Thank you for the reply.

Can bcc used insted or it is the same risk?

Now what autoresponder do you recommend that would be compatible?

I need to find a way to*let the user have a copy of the submission.

Thanks in advance!

Jose.

[russellr]

Hi,

Any web page that accepts an arbitrary email address and sends data to that email address is a security problem.

For example, I could go to your form and enter billbloggs@ibm.com and send a message to him.

Of course, he'll only get the results of the form, but if your form had a free text area I could use it to send him advertising material.* Such as, "Hi, please buy my super medication for just $9.95!!!"

It's a simple matter for spammers to automatically use such a form for spamming.

If you allowed this, your web hosting provider would probably (and should)*cancel your account!

The only safe mechanism is to accept the form results, have a person design an appropriate email template*and then send an email response.

If you use TectiteCRM, you could easily accept hundreds of form submissions each day, and send out an email with some of the information they submitted.* It would only take a few minutes each day.

You have to login to TectiteCRM to send the emails (you can format and send hundreds at a time using*the simple template feature).

TectiteCRM doesn't support (and shouldn't support) completely automated replies, for several reasons, including the security problem described above.

*

[tt]

What about built-in autoresponder in your script?

*

[russellr]

Hi,

It's not a technical problem is an administrative problem.

It's easy to send email to anyone.* But how are you going to secure it from spammers?

*

[tt]

HI Russell,

Thanks for your quick reply to my questions.

I have seen formmail scripts that have a built-in autoresponder by somehow gettting the email of the sender and generating an automated reply, and also you can send data from the fields in your form. It's all done internally in the php code, so I don't know how a spammer will access this info.

What do you think about adding this to the code?

[russellr]

Hi,

Here's how...

Suppose on your form you have these fields:

• email address[/*]
• name[/*]
• message (a*text field)

[/*]
And you've configured FormMail (or something else) to send the question to the email address given.

The spammer simply submits data to FormMail like this:

• email=fred@somewhere.com message="Hi, buy my product"[/*]
• email=john@xyz.com message="Hi, buy my product"[/*]
• etc.

[/*]
*

*

[russellr]

Hi Jose,

Someone else has recently asked for an autoresponder feature in FormMail and we've come up with a solution that overcomes the security problems with it.

Would you like to review this thread: http://www.tectite.com/vbforums/showthread.php?t=144

and post your response. Would your users be happy with this solution?