My on site spams my email.

  • How do I stop spammers from using my own site to send me spam email? The spam emails has my email address as the sender, but it has some spammers name attached to it. It looks like this: “LilaDanielglams <[email protected]>.”

    Also, the spam emails list my website name in the subject line along with additional info about the spam topic.

    If I mark those emails as spam, then other email notifications from my site go to spam.

    How can I stop this?

    Thanks,

    Pat

    • This topic was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by pasqualerose.
Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • Hello Pat,

    Is the spam coming from your contact form?

    I have a combination of plugins that I work that could help solve this problem, but I’m not sure if it’s okay for me to share the links with you as I may get a slap for “self-promotion.”

    But, if I get the okay from a mod, I’d be happy to help.

    Thanks

    Thread Starter pasqualerose

    (@pasqualerose)

    AlbertsWeb, Yes, I believe so.

    Thread Starter pasqualerose

    (@pasqualerose)

    Bryan, if you know of a plug-in that is available under the plugin section, just let me know the name of it and I will search for it. And if it happens to be be yours, it will be my decision to use it or not.

    Thanks,

    Pat

    The aptly named Stop Spammers.

    And Contact Form Zero, which is heavily focused on eliminating spam, but may be too simple if you need extra fields other than the basic ones.

    Good luck.

    I would recommend setting up a captcha for the contact form as well as updating the domain’s SPF record to help prevent mail from being spoofed and help keep it from going to spam.

    https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-an-spf-record-to-prevent-spoofing-improve-e-mail-reliability

    Thread Starter pasqualerose

    (@pasqualerose)

    Atxmatt. At one time, I thought I had a captcha on for Contact Form 7. But apparently it got turned off. It was several years ago that I set that up. I’m guessing that overtime, with all the updates, it must’ve got turned off. I’ll have to check how to redo that.

    I’m not so sure about that SPF thing. That seems to complicated for my non-technical brain. I’m just a guy with a blog. But at least I know I can probably watch a YouTube video on setting up the captcha for Contact Form 7

    Thanks,

    Pat

    The SPF record can definitely be a bit daunting to address but not impossible! Contacting the hosting provider would be a first step in seeing what needs to be done to update the SPF record.

    Just bear in mind that the website hosting provider may not be the domain registrar and if the domain you provide in your initial post is the actual domain; your domain registrar is in fact separate.

    So, with that said, the DNS looks like it would be managed at Bluehost. https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/dns-spf

    The SPF record is basically just telling email recipients what address/server the domain/email is supposed to originate from.

    The captcha is going to help address your first issue of bots or spammers abusing the contact form. The SPF record is going to help address email deliverability to inboxes.

    Please note that these are not a panacea. I suggest implementing additional hardening techniques. You can use this for help on that https://www.ads-software.com/support/article/hardening-wordpress/

    Once you have the SPF record updated, look to then add a DKIM to further help with email hardening.

    I hope this helps and good luck!

    Thread Starter pasqualerose

    (@pasqualerose)

    The hosting on my site is a bit complicated because it’s tied to an app that I also have. Originally I had the site hosted with Bluehost, but switch to a company that built apps for blog sites. Now they host the site but do not host the domain name. I still purchase that through Bluehost.

    I’ll have to check to see if my host can do anything about it.

    Thanks,

    Pat

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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