Why am I receiving so many spam feedback comments to forms on my blog?
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Starting about a week ago, i started receiving hundreds of spam feedback responses to forms on my blog. It started out with one post, so I edited it and made it private. Then it continued to a second post, so changed both posts to drafts. Then the spam started coming from a 3rd post.
It has flooded my e-mail inbox with really lude material and the spam blocker is not doing it’s job when it comes to feedback forms. I haven’t had this problem with spam comments coming through the spam blocker.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
Sorry about the trouble, and thanks for reporting the issue.
If a lot of the spam comments have a common string of text, I suggest adding that string to your blacklist:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklistYou can use the comment author’s name, IP address, web site, as well as the comment itself. Please make sure the word is not something contained in non-spam comments. For example, if you enter “press” as a blacklisted word, “WordPress” will match.
Also, please mark those comments as spam instead of just deleting. Our Akismet anti-spam engine tries to learn from a pattern of the comments that are marked as spam, and spammers are always trying new ways to get around our spam filters. Your help with this step is greatly appreciated!
For more information about dealing with unwanted comments, visit:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/unwanted-comments/Thank you and let me know if you have any questions.
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I have added the common words to my black list, but I’ve still received feedback with those words. I think the issue is that the spam isn’t in comments, it’s feedback to forms I’ve posted. Even when I’ve gone back and turned posts into drafts, the spam just finds a different post to send feedback on.
I haven’t found a way to manage feedback from forms as compared to comments on a post.
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Are the feedbacks being marked as spam or are they being let through as if it were a normal, non-spam feedback?
A blacklist won’t prevent the spammer from making a comment or feedback, but it should immediately put the feedback in the spam queue where you can choose to bulk delete them permanently off your site.
If you have some specific examples, that would be useful too.
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The feedbacks are not being marked as spam, so I have been marking them, but there’s SO many, it’s really time consuming. I’ve use the blog as an educational tool with a youth program that I run, so the form is almost like an online worksheet for me. What I’m getting is responses to my form with all sorts of lude comments.
Here’s a copy of one response to this post: http://michellerohretjohnson.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/conflict-week-5-non-violence/
[edited for content]
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Ok – thank you for clarifying.
Let me do some research and I will get back to you when I have more information. In the meantime, please continue to flag these items as spam.
Thanks again.
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I heard back from the spam team and they’ve seen a spike in these types of spam over the past week or so and are currently working on a fix for this issue. The good news is that it’s not just you!
In the meantime, they recommend that you update your forms to include a required email address field as this tends to stop a majority of this type of spam from ever getting through in the first place. For any others that do make it through and are not marked as spam, please keep marking them as spam as it will help our team in fixing this issue.
Thanks for your help with this! Please let me know if you have any questions.
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