Empty Spam Mails despite required fields & recaptcha

Hello,
in the last Night we received up to 80 (spam?) emails with no content. But we use required fields & recaptcha for all our forms. The IPs are 185.38.47.93 (us) and 23.94.9.196 (uk). If we try by yourself we can't send a message. Do you had a idea what's the problem?

A site with on of your froms is https://offensichtlich.de/kontakt/schreiben-sie-uns

We hope you had a solutions for this problem and we hear from you.

Greetings

Norman

Hi Norman,

A Google search suggests that Project HoneyPot (currently down for maintanace) sees both of these as spambots. The US one as a Comment Spammer and the other as an Email Harvester. Basically they just scan the web checking every URL they find looking for *useful* stuff for their purposes.

These bots have JavaScript disabled so user-side validation will not do anything to stop them. Serverside validation should - and so should the Captcha. I am wondering if the Captcha is correctly configured?

I suggest that you add serverside validation to block these two IP addresses and kill that source.

Bob

Hi Bob,

thanks for your replie. I think our captcha work correct but how I can check it better? We use the google capatch and put in in the setup to "on load" & "on submit" normally it works fine ... only the spam bot make problems. 😟 What we can make better?

Okay, we try now the serverside validation but this works not 100% 😉

Hi Norman,

Please take a Form Backup using the icon in the Forms Manager, post it here I'll take a closer look.

Bob

Hi Bob,

okay. here the Backup:

This is private content

I hope it will help us.

Greetings Norman

Hi Norman,

You need to add Event Loop actions to both the pink ON Fail boxes - otherwise nothing happens if the check fails.

The Server Validation needs to be moved up before the Email action - otherwise the email is sent before the validation is run.

The custom code for the redirection needs updating a little for CFv5 and Joomla! 3

<?php
$jdoc = \JFactory::getDocument();
$jdoc->addCustomTag('<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="15;url=http://offensichtlich.de/kontakt/wunschtermin" />');
?>

There is a built in datepicker in CFv5 - if you keep the Custom Code version that code also needs similar changes.

Here's a copy with those changes made.

Bob

Hello Bob,

is it possible to give me the backup from the form with your changes as a "template" for me?

A small question by the way. In your demo I can't find a datepicker only the field for the desired date?!

Thank you & Greetings
Norman

Hi Norman.

Here's the backup copy. I didn't try to add the code for the custom datepicker that you have configured or replace it with a CFv5 datepicker.

Bob

Hi Bob,

your modify form help us a long time. Now we had the problem we recaive with tis modify form his😟

name: nike air max personnalise
email: qplzwut@gmail.com

phone: http://www.dvo-occasions.com/free/nike-air-max-personnalise.html

appointment: nike air max personnalise
message: http://www.abri-carapax.com/homme/nike-roshe-run-bestel.html nike roshe run bestel
IP: 91.200.12.77

Do you a a tipp for us to fix it?

Greetings Norman

Hi hardy_bln,

I would add an Event Switcher in the On Submit event and check for '://' in the phone and possibly message fields. If it's found either reload the form or redirect to the home page.

Bob

Hi Bob,
do you have a praxis example for us? I have no idea what I have to do!
Is there a better way to solve this problem?
Greetings

Hi hardy_bln,

The Event Switcher would need a ReDirect action in the On Fail event pointed to say, the site home page. In the Event Switcher you can use code like this

<?php
if ( strpos($form->data['phone'], '::/') !== false || strpos($form->data['message'], '::/') !== false ) {
  return 'fail';
}
?>

Replace phone and message with the input names from your form.

Bob