I got this message through a Freeform form today:

The following inquiry was sent via the online form:

Entry Date: 2007-10-11 03:32 PM
Form Name: tdpcontact
First Name: rfejunmfl
Last Name: rfejunmfl
Email: jpyrsn@bnyvey.com
Phone: dACeFhHUuSkLjy
Best Time to Contact: HWsESsrQhdYDa
Comments: 3QRVdL avbqizajeedc,
hfuwgnhhekfl,
[link=http://jfdeigqkvujz.com/]jfdeigqkvujz[/link],
http://tompjxpurmwi.com/

I’ve had lots of these through other mail forms and am interested in ways to prevent them. I don’t believe your spam extension will help in this case because it’s not a matter of “forbidden words.“ I’ve done quite a bit of research on this over the past few months and was hoping Freeform would somehow be more secure. Any ideas?

how about enabling captcha?

Oh, I should have said “without using captchas.“ I realize they work, they are just so un-friendly. In most cases the spam is coming through simple contact forms on relatively low traffic sites; I just think there must be a better way . . .

Hey Vicki,

The kind of posting you’re referencing above looks like someone just clowning around with your form. Without captchas or spam extension, there’s not much that can be done.

mk

Well spam is everywhere, isn’t it? As it turns out, the message I copied above is the only one that has come through that form so far. The reason I was concerned is that I’ve seen the same type of message come through other sites, and once they start they really pick up speed. They often use the same “word” for first name and last name. So I don’t think it was just a human messing around. Also, I don’t see how the spam extension could help with this type of thing since my understanding is that it will only filter words I plug in, and I don’t know what words they might use. Am I missing something?

On another note, I wonder if the spammer on your forum was attracted by the message I copied above. If so, sorry.

Vicki,

I wish I had a superb solution for you with Freeform. At the moment I don’t. I’m sorry. We’ll work on something better.

mk

Vicki - I don’t know if this will work in your case, but I had similar random and repeating spam issues with my Freeform install recently and using Mitchell’s spam extension I simply entered the following in the the blacklist field:

The spam has stopped in completely. Spam almost always contains links and I don’t have a reason to have an html coded link emailed to me, so this works for me. Thought I’d share, as I’ve used the same simple suppression for comments and other forms and it seems to be a quick if somewhat heavy-handed approach.