SilentShield – Captcha & Anti-Spam for WordPress (CF7, WPForms, Elementor, WooCommerce)

SilentShield is a unified captcha and anti-spam plugin for WordPress. It works with the most popular form builders and protects login, registration, and comment forms – without slowing your site.

Why choose SilentShield? – Invisible defense – Captcha, honeypot, and blacklists working silently. – Instant results – Install, activate, and stop spam. – Universal support – Works with Contact Form 7, WPForms, Elementor, Formidable, Ninja Forms, Forminator, Kadence, WooCommerce, and more. – Privacy-first – No cookies, no tracking, fully GDPR / DSGVO compliant.

SilentShield doesn’t just protect forms. It protects your time, your customers, your business.

Core Features

• Invisible Captcha (Arithmetic, Honeypot, Image)
• Smart IP Blocking & Blacklists
• Spam filters for links, code & keywords
• Whitelisting for admins & customers
• GDPR-ready, no cookies, no tracking

Supported Form Plugins & Integrations

SilentShield protects forms from all major WordPress form builders and core features:

Form Builders: – Contact Form 7 (CF7) – WPForms / WPForms Lite – Elementor Pro Forms (classic widget and v4 “atomic” forms) – Gravity Forms – Fluent Forms – Formidable Forms – Ninja Forms – Forminator – JetFormBuilder – Kadence Blocks (Advanced Form) – Avada (Fusion Builder) Forms

Newsletter: – MC4WP – Mailchimp for WordPress (signup forms)

WooCommerce: – Checkout (classic & PayPal Payments) – Login – Registration – Lost password – Account details

WordPress Core: – Login form (wp-login.php) – Registration form – Lost password form – Comment forms (including WooCommerce product reviews)

Other: – Ultimate Member (Login & Registration) – WP Job Manager (Job Applications)

Each integration can be enabled or disabled individually under Settings > Extended.

Protection Layers

SilentShield uses 10+ protection mechanisms working together:

1. Captcha – Arithmetic math, honeypot, or image-based captcha
2. JavaScript Protection – Detects submissions from bots without JS support
3. Browser Detection – Validates User-Agent strings
4. Timer Protection – Blocks submissions faster than a human can type
5. Multiple Submission Protection – Prevents rapid duplicate submissions
6. IP Rate Limiting – Limits requests per IP and time window
7. IP Blacklist – Block known bad IPs
8. Content Rules – Limit URLs, block BBCode, keyword blacklist
9. Gibberish Detection – Recognises submissions filled with random characters, the kind a bot writes when it only needs the form to go through. Unlike every other check it does not depend on the sender’s browser, so a bot driving a real browser cannot pass it by playing along. Starts in observation mode and blocks nothing until you switch it on.
10. Whitelist – Skip validation for admins, logged-in users, or specific emails/IPs
11. SilentShield API (Beta) – Cloud-based spam detection

The Promise

SilentShield is not “just another plugin.” It’s an invisible wall against the background noise of the internet.

Activate once – and your forms are human again.

Privacy & Telemetry

• No cookies, no user tracking.
• Encrypted IP storage (max. 2 months, only for spam defense).
• Every transmission described below is optional and can be switched off in the plugin settings.
• The plugin’s built-in Privacy page shows which of these are active on your site, what that means, and gives you ready-made privacy-policy snippets in 25 languages.

1. Plugin statistics (setting “Telemetry”) Anonymous, no personal data, sent at most once a day: – plugin_slug, plugin_version – snapshot_date – settings_json (anonymized config – only boolean/integer flags, no free-text) – features_json (enabled features) – created_at, first_seen, last_seen – counters_json (spam events) – wp_version, php_version, locale

2. AI-crawler observation (setting “Observe AI crawlers”, on by default; SILENTSHIELD_OBSERVER to force off) Sent only for requests identified as an AI crawler — never for your human visitors. Delivered after the page has already been sent to the visitor: – ua (the crawler’s User-Agent), ip, path (without query string), method – The IP address is pseudonymised on the server (daily keyed hash) and never stored in the clear.

3. Blocked-request reports (only with “Block AI crawlers (enforce)” on; follows the observation setting above) Same fields as (2), plus the outcome (deny / throttle), for every request enforcement turned away. Note that a block rule which is not restricted to a specific crawler can also catch a human visitor — that request is then reported in the same way.

4. Form assessment (only with the SilentShield API enabled) See the API snippet on the plugin’s Privacy page for the full description.

GDPR / DSGVO Compliance – Basis: Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f DSGVO (legitimate interest – spam defense and plugin optimization). – Recipient and processor for (2)–(4): Forge12 Interactive GmbH, Josefstr. 37, 78166 Donaueschingen. Processing takes place exclusively on servers in Germany (Hetzner); no third-country transfer. – (2)–(4) transmit an IP address and therefore require a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR) and a note in your privacy policy. The plugin’s Privacy page tracks both. – No cookies, no user tracking.