• Resolved schemjo

    (@schemjo)


    Hi all, we all have issues with spam to a certain extent. As of yesterday my client has received about 30+ spam messages but these seem unique. I’ve seen them where they’re from bogus email addresses or generic gmail/yahoo/aol addresses but lots of these are coming from actual business email addresses and the only field that’s filled out other than email is the name field. Here are two examples:

     Email - [email protected] (changed it to protect their company)
    

    Name – 58f72e5fa7f57

     Email - [email protected]
    

    Name – 58f6bbe8597a6

    Theme and plugins are up to date. Is anyone else seeing cases similar to this?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • I am having the same issue. I removed my contact form from my page and I’m still getting emails. HOW IS THIS HAPPENING Its hacked!

    I’ve got several sites doing the same thing. Has anyone found a solution. I’ve added CAPTCHA’s to some but others I can’t do that. This has been happening for about 5 days now and keeps getting more frequent.

    @schemjo, @danielledev, @hotbiz1:

    Hopefully I can help.

    Spammers can hit your contact forms just like anything else. Most of the time it’s bots (automated programs) but it can be human spammers too.

    If you install the WP-SpamShield plugin, it will automatically protect Contact Form 7 forms, without CAPTCHAs or anything to annoy your users. Completely invisible.

    Your spam contact form submissions will go away immediately.

    Keep in mind: If you have email addresses posted on your site, you’ll want to take those off and rely on the contact form. That’s the whole reason they were originally invented…to limit spam. (It takes fewer steps for a user to get an email to you than writing an actual email anyway, so it is user friendly.) Contact forms don’t expose your email addresses. Once a spammer gets your email address, you can’t get it back. They spam you, and sell your email address, and these buyers will spam you, and they’ll sell it, and those buyers will spam you…it will go on endlessly.

    WPSS does have email obfuscation built in, but it’s still better to completely remove them from your site.

    @danielledev: I noticed that you have an email address up on your site…is it possible spammers are sending directly to that?

    @hotbiz1: I noticed that you have two contact forms up on your Contact page. I’d recommend just using one or the other, as that could cause you some issues as well.

    Full disclosure: I’m the lead developer of WP-SpamShield, and this is a shameless plug. Every word is true though. If we can help people who are getting spammed, we genuinely want to help. ??

    — Scott

    Anyone – did this work? Having same issue and it’s relentless. Combing threads to find solution. Please help!

    Thread Starter schemjo

    (@schemjo)

    Hi, thanks all for the responses. I tried Akismet and so far it’s doing a good job. We haven’t received spam since the 19th.

    @redsand – that looks like an awesome plugin! So far things are working but I’ll definitely give yours a try should it stop working.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • The topic ‘Interesting spam suddenly started to happen’ is closed to new replies.