Lots of Spam With ReCaptcha 3.0 Update

I ended up making the change recommended by @peterupfold in this post, and I haven’t had any spam since. The contact form still works for humans. You might give it a try, as it’s much easier than reverting, and will potentially buy you time until the next update, which hopefully has a fix.

Just change line ~112 of wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/modules/recaptcha.php from:

return $spam;

to:

return true;

Now we gotta touch the PHP? What about to all the people that doesn’t know the technical stuff such as PHP and all that.

The solution suggested by @peterupfold is extremely poor practice and should be avoided.

He says:

This is a _very_ unofficial change on my part, but it seems to work for me.

IMO others should definitely not be recommending this to users & I have reported this to Forum Moderation for examination.

@buzztone You’re not wrong, no one should edit code. But it’s something people can and will do in an emergency, and we simply disrecommend it. Please stop flagging the posts about this.

Thanks for the clarification on Forum Moderation policy – I was not clear on this.

Download the previous version and reinstall it seems to have worked for me

Hi,
indicated here
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/recaptcha-version-3/

Dear Moderator @ipstenu – Why have my two responses to this thread have been deleted?

I also see that @kaleu81 had his responses deleted.

Is there something wrong with our posts? Not being rude or using bad language. Simply providing a solution (revert to previous versions). Would appreciate clarification.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by derrickr. Reason: Update
• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by derrickr. Reason: adding modlook

@ipstenu thank you for the temporary fix – do you have an ETA for a new release? I’ve got about 20 sites with Contact Form 7 all being flooded with spam. It’ll take ma while to manually patch them all and but I can’t wait more than a couple of days before they start getting very unhappy.

Hi @patabugen I can’t see @ipstenu temporary fix, could you please clarify for me? Thanks.

I used the recommendation from @peterupfold and have had no issues. Emails come through and spam stopped immediately… Here’s what he suggested:

Just change line ~112 of wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/modules/recaptcha.php from:

return $spam;

to:

return true;

Granted editing code is not a good practice regarding plugins, but it will get you by until it is fixed.

Hi @saabee19 does this solution still show the v3 reCaptcha graphic in the bottom right hand corner of every page?

Yes it does.

In the same boat with this issue. The moment after we implemented recaptcha v3, spam started filling the inbox. Going to try @peterupfold fix for now until an updated plugin is offered. I hope that things will be fixed soon. But thank you @peterupfold for coming up with something we can use in the mean time. Much appreciated.

I am A moderator. Not the only one. Other mods removed posts they felt to be dangerous. I don’t, but I do feel them to be short sighted.

Since I don’t manage this plugin, I don’t know when it’ll be fixed. Peter’s fix WILL work, but will be overwritten when the plugin is updated. As such, I cannot recommend it’s use. Furthermore, I consider it to be incredibly reckless and dangerous to apply code patches without a clear understanding of the security implications.

tl;dr? If you’re not perfectly sure what that code does, and it wasn’t provided by someone you trust with the keys to your car, don’t do it.