Spambot email protector - some more info please
2 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder: Plugins & Add-ons
Last Post: December 7, 2010 (RSS)
By JeffC - December 7, 2010
I have had an attack on my website and I would be interested to know if the spambot email protector will solve my problem.
My set up:
I have a competition page on my site. Users complete a form with their details and their answer to the competition question. Their entry populates my contacts database. Within the CMS I can search for the correct answer and I have a list of winning entries that I can export and select a winner.
The problem:
A couple of days ago I received 25,000 entries in 1 hour. (I usually receive about 2000 per month). All of the emails addresses look genuine but the volume suggests to me that it must be an attack. According to google analytics my visitor numbers haven't increase significantly which again confirms something dodgy is going on.
What would anyone gain from doing this? Is it just someone playing the system and trying to increase their chances of winning or is there any way that someone could have a more sinister use? It seems strange to me that someone would be trying to add to my database rather than harvesting from my database.
Would the spambot protector stop this from happening again or does it just stop emails being collected from my site?
Any help greatly appreciated
My set up:
I have a competition page on my site. Users complete a form with their details and their answer to the competition question. Their entry populates my contacts database. Within the CMS I can search for the correct answer and I have a list of winning entries that I can export and select a winner.
The problem:
A couple of days ago I received 25,000 entries in 1 hour. (I usually receive about 2000 per month). All of the emails addresses look genuine but the volume suggests to me that it must be an attack. According to google analytics my visitor numbers haven't increase significantly which again confirms something dodgy is going on.
What would anyone gain from doing this? Is it just someone playing the system and trying to increase their chances of winning or is there any way that someone could have a more sinister use? It seems strange to me that someone would be trying to add to my database rather than harvesting from my database.
Would the spambot protector stop this from happening again or does it just stop emails being collected from my site?
Any help greatly appreciated
Jeff
Re: [Jeffncou] Spambot email protector - some more info please
By Jason - December 7, 2010
Hi,
Spambot email protector will just stop email harvesters from getting emails off of your pages. What has happened here is a webbot is being used to automate the processes of filling out and submitting your form. There are lots of reasons people do this, including trying to overload and crash web servers.
What you need is a way of verifying that the person filling out your form is actually a person and not a webbot. There are a number of tools you can use to do this. On our site, we use a free google application called reCaptcha:
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore
All you need is a free google account, or you can use your existing gmail account if you already have one, to get a user key. They will also give you the php code you need to integrate it into your existing form.
I would suggest starting there. Let us know if you run into any problems.
Hope this helps.
Spambot email protector will just stop email harvesters from getting emails off of your pages. What has happened here is a webbot is being used to automate the processes of filling out and submitting your form. There are lots of reasons people do this, including trying to overload and crash web servers.
What you need is a way of verifying that the person filling out your form is actually a person and not a webbot. There are a number of tools you can use to do this. On our site, we use a free google application called reCaptcha:
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore
All you need is a free google account, or you can use your existing gmail account if you already have one, to get a user key. They will also give you the php code you need to integrate it into your existing form.
I would suggest starting there. Let us know if you run into any problems.
Hope this helps.
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Jason Sauchuk - Project Manager
interactivetools.com
Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/
Jason Sauchuk - Project Manager
interactivetools.com
Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/