Security check: referal does not match this site.

  • We have been using multiple VFB forms on our nonprofit site for several years.
    Recently we went through the exercise of updating WordPress to 5.5.3 (latest recommended at the time), and subsequently updating all plugins to their latest compatible versions. Everything continued to work fine, and fairly thorough testing of all pages and forms and links proved successful.

    However, intermittently some users are reporting the “Security check: referal does not match this site.” error on 3 of our 4 forms. Interestingly, the most commonly used Contact form has not generated any user-reported errors yet. We tried setting Required=No for this verification step, but this didn’t solve it. Yes, we’ve tried both entering characters in the field and leaving it blank – no difference, for those users who experience the error. We’ve also tried to correlate the error to device types and browsers, but there doesn’t appear to be a connection.

    I did some searching on the plugin forums for this error, which seems to pop up every few years, so maybe all the recent WordPress and plugins updates have brought it back. Is it still the case that some form of vfb_skip_referrer_check addresses this? If so, what are the most current instructions for recent WordPress/plugins versions?

    Help resolving this time-killer is most appreciated!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Hi, did you get anywhere with this? I have the same (very frustrating) issue!

    Thread Starter str8shoot3r

    (@str8shoot3r)

    No luck on having the plugin fixed, even after emailing the creator of VFB directly.

    For the time being I’m utilizing an autologin process on the pages containing the offending forms, to a guest account with no real site access nor modification ability. This bypasses the security check and therefore no error. Monitored for a while and tweaked permissions slightly to deal with morons and hackers, but so far so good.

    I plan to revamp the use of these forms in the near future, migrating to another provider, so the problem will eventually go away.

    I could certainly do with an answer from the plugin authors as having a similar issue on a client’s site… and they are very unhappy about these errors that persist in appearing when their site is particularly busy.

    Same problem — sad the authors have not responded as to what is causing this. Following.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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