What's the game with my contact form ?

Discussion in 'Site & Server Administration' started by scoopy82, Oct 22, 2007.

  1. #1
    I have a few sites with contact forms... but on one site I am getting a strange email at the rate of 1 per day. They always say something short... like "wow", "nice site", etc... and the email they use is usually something like

    I suspect they are testing my contact form for mail injection vulnerabilities... but why would they keep this up day after day ? (if it is the same group of spammers)

    Anyone know what these emails are really about and what they may be trying to do ?

    thanks,
     
    scoopy82, Oct 22, 2007 IP
  2. chickens

    chickens Peon

    Messages:
    242
    Likes Received:
    11
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #2
    Its a spam bot. Quite often they are used for automatically filling out forms on blogs. I would suggest setting the form up to verify the email address. This way if they do not fill it in with a valid email it will just error out.

    You could always use a captcha, but I hate captchas.
     
    chickens, Oct 23, 2007 IP
  3. hycari

    hycari Peon

    Messages:
    228
    Likes Received:
    1
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #3
    Spam bots are really aggravating. I too hate Captchas. I would just do the e-mail verification. Also, if the script allows, you could check the e-mail for blacklists and stuff, and if it is in blacklists you can refuse them from using the contact form.
     
    hycari, Oct 23, 2007 IP
  4. inworx

    inworx Peon

    Messages:
    4,860
    Likes Received:
    201
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #4
    Contact form vulnerabilities? They've gone crazy....

    Use email verification....but it would be hard to do that since it'll need mySQL database and you might not want to add few more queries...

    Captcha is recommended, though no one likes it, but it'll be easier to implement.
     
    inworx, Oct 23, 2007 IP
  5. scoopy82

    scoopy82 Active Member

    Messages:
    838
    Likes Received:
    45
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    70
    #5
    thanks ;)

    Then I won't worry too much about these for now... seeing its only 1 email per day. There are bigger fish to fry right now.
     
    scoopy82, Oct 23, 2007 IP
  6. craigedmonds

    craigedmonds Notable Member

    Messages:
    705
    Likes Received:
    134
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    235
    #6
    is there a form spam blacklist somewhere?
     
    craigedmonds, Oct 24, 2007 IP