Forums

Hi,

Looking for suggestions on how I can get rid of a spammer who is driving me mad.

I have the display IP address of submitter switched on, so I am noting the IP address which is 49.74.64.229 - using an iplocator I can tell this is China.

So I:-

1. I added a Captcha to the 2 forms on the website - didn't make any difference. I've not had any problems with the site so hadn't added the Captchas until I needed them.
2. Use a blocker to block the IP address - this doesn't work.
3. So I change to another blocker which uses country codes to block China - this doesn't work.
3. Thinking the IP blockers aren't working I decide to check my stats. I can get IP details there too. There are no recorded visits from IP 49.74.64.229.

I'm getting between 9 and 12 emails a day but had 2 days without anything so thought I'd cracked it!

All suggestions welcome as I'm thinking they are not actually visiting my site to complete the forms.

I appreciate 9-12 extra emails to delete isn't a lot but I want to stop this person just because. I have no respect for these idiots.

Thanks,

Gillian

Hi Gillian,

Please see this FAQ and/or this FAQ.

Bob

Thanks a million Bob.

Apologies for asking something that had already been covered, I did search the forum but obviously not properly!

Gillian

Hi,

Unfortunately that hasn't worked. They are now using a different IP address, and although I added it to the code another email has just come through this evening.

This is my code, all IPs are China.

<?php
$banned_ips = array(
  '49.74.64.229',
  '117.62.160.64',
  '121.225.168.20'
);
$ip_address = JRequest::getString( 'REMOTE_ADDR', '', 'server' );
if ( in_array($ip_address, $banned_ips) ) {
  $mainframe->redirect('http://www.mysite.org');
}
?> 

Any other suggestions? Anyone else having problems with these idiots?

Thanks,

Gillian

I have the same problem.
Can anyone confirm if I have put custom code the correct place?
If not, please give some more info on where to put it.

Hi,

Do you have captcha or any other anti spam mechanism on the form ?

Regards,
Max

Hi,

Yes I have the captcha active.

I got so tired of this that I went to my domain cpanel and I added the range of domains to the IP blocker there but this alone wasn't enough. Then I set up a filter on the email to stop all emails containing the word 'u-g-g' from reaching me. All of the emails I was receiving were for fake u-g-g boots.

Thankfully no more emails.

Gillian

P.S. I had to enter the word as u-g-g because the proper word was marked as spam when I submitted the post!

Hi Gillian,

Sounds like we have the same spammers here :-)

Bob

Yeah Bob it does!

I am delighted to be rid of them, for a while at least! 🙄

Gillian