Preventing Submission – spammers trying to sell me viagra

[pinkcaviar]

Hi

My site is recently being spammed with people filling out the form advertising male enhancement stuff like viagra and cialis.

I have already made a logic condition that if the word ‘viagra’ or ‘cialis’ appear then the submit button will disappear. Somehow they have found a way to get around this.

Is there a logic condition to prevent submission (not just make the button vanish) if certain criteria is met like mentioned above. As mentioned I have already set the submit button to vanish and have “are you a robot enabled” so somehow they found a way.

Is there a solution. Thanks 🙂

[Ally]

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[diegocanal]

Hi Ally

Does Quform supports the WordPress built-in feature Comment Blacklist?

That would be great as I believe that in most cases users would be willing to use the same blacklist for both, the WP comments form and the other forms built with Quform.

Regards
Diego

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by diegocanal.
• This reply was modified 7 years ago by diegocanal.

[Ally]

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[pinkcaviar]

I wanted to give an update. I want to thank the team for the code as it works great. Starting off with viagra I am very selective of the words I put on this list.

I am choosing words that are very obvious and would not be used when fillling out my form.

Words such as internship and Adwords are also there as many people look for internships for study with us and many seo people promote adwords.

Happy to share words that we can add which are mutually beneficial

[katw]

@pinkcaviar “A useful word list” would be a great help for many of us.

As would having a “global” blacklist settings option for Quform.

An addition for a future release?

[Ally]

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[diegocanal]

Hi

Thanks Ally for adding the suggestion to your development list. In the meantime, would it be too much to ask you for the piece of custom code that would do the trick? 🙂

Regards
Diego

[diegocanal]

@katw, regarding:

(…)“A useful word list” would be a great help for many of us.(…)

I suggest everybody to use the Comment Blacklist for WordPress at GitHub managed by Grant Hutchinson. Just pay attention in case you are in a rare niche that needs some of the keywords, phrases or patterns to be removed, otherwise this list is pretty universal.

Even there are some plugins in the WordPress repository that fetch the data from that list, e.g. Comment Blacklist Manager By Andrew Norcross that automatically feeds the Comment Blacklist that is used by the WordPress built-in feature.

Regards
Diego

[katw]

@Diego thanks for the tips and leads.

Will be very helpful, but wouldn’t a public GitHub vocabulary list become less than effective when SPAMMERs read the words we are blacklisting. Useful to try nonetheless.

Thanks again.

[diegocanal]

@katw regarding:

(…)but wouldn’t a public GitHub vocabulary list become less than effective when SPAMMERs read the words we are blacklistin(…)

I have managed many sites for many years and this blacklist has proven to be pretty effective. Take into account that:

• It is regularly updated so spammers would have to keep an eye on it constantly
• It is not easy for a spammer to avoid the patterns as they cover a lot of ground
• You can combine it with your own set of keywords, phrases and patterns

It is true that heuristic filtering, (e.g. bayesian) it is the ideal solution in terms of effectiveness. I have tried some plugins that employ it but they come with drawbacks that have finally made me choose this simpler solution as, at least for the sites I’ve managed so far, it’s been more than enough.

[Ally]

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[katw]

@Ally

Cool!

I assume we make a plugin like normal or add to functions.php?

[diegocanal]

Hi Ally,

As always, you go beyond your duty and limits to provide us with the best possible support.

Thank you!

Regards
Diego

[Ally]

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