[Plugin: Contact Form 7] 404 triggering by browsers looking up missing captcha files

I’ve found a potential solution that I just started testing.

In the wp-content\uploads\wpcf7_captcha directory, there’s an .htaccess file with the following code:

Order deny,allow
Deny from all
<Files ~ "^[0-9A-Za-z]+\.(jpeg|gif|png)$">
    Allow from all
</Files>

I changed it to stop caching of these image files:

Order deny,allow
Deny from all
<Files ~ "^[0-9A-Za-z]+\.(jpeg|gif|png)$">
    Allow from all
    Header set Cache-Control: "private, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0"
    Header set Expires: 0
    Header set Pragma: no-cache
</Files>

What do you think? Will this be helpful in this case?

I have been experiencing the same problem, multiple 404s for a captcha image that was only generated temporarily for a message sent through Contact Form 7. A niggle really but as you point out, it does clog up the 404 logs. Has your edit to the .htaccess file resolved the problem?

It’s been a while but I don’t think it worked, as I checked the .htaccess file and see that I reverted back.

Thanks for checking and getting back. I’ve just tried adding the following line to the robots.txt file:

Disallow: /wp-content/uploads/

After sending several test emails the 404s are not showing up so far. Will keep an eye on it.

Come to think of it, I’ve been using the following in robots.txt for several months:

Disallow: /wp-content/uploads/wpcf7_captcha/

The problem is — it’s not working, I think. I’m still seeing 404s from the captcha images. It’s possible though that the problem is reduced from before, but I have no way to test it.