Form sends data to email but too much spam

Developing with Concrete
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I am using my own php form processor using phpMailer. But have had some issues with spam sneaking through although I use Google Recaptcha in some case or the C5 addon Automatic Email Obfuscator. Be interested to know what people use to lessen spam such as smtp or a separate form processing company.

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I built the package Anti-spammer Master in the marketplace and in my experience a honey pot can sometimes be extremely effective.

But your mileage may vary.

I know several websites that almost totally stopped SPAM with just the honeypot option from my package. It’s the case for my own websites.

But I know others for which the honeypot didn’t make a difference.

So I’d say definitely implement a honeypot as it’s an easy way. Then maybe the time to submission, the number of messages per unit of time, and the use of URL shorteners could be a good start.

I also had good results with Akismet but it’s, in theory, a paid service.

You should do a quick analysis of the kind of SPAM you’re getting, though, to find the best approach.

If you want to have a look at my package, the screenshots will give you an idea of what’s implemented.

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One thing I’ve found quite effective is to geo-block certain countries. In my situation, I’m really not interested in anything that comes out of China, Russia etc, and pretty much anywhere that isn’t a “Five eyes” country. It’s relatively simple to do - either use Concrete’s built in GeoIP library, or if you’re using external code, it boils down to:

file_get_contents(‘http://www.geoplugin.net/json.gp?ip=192.168.1.1’);

which returns a JSON payload including the ISO country code. If the country code is not one you want to hear from, drop it all on the floor. - better still, fake an “invalid captcha” response - drives 'em nutz!

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