The Visforms spam protection plugin
Online databases
In the fight against spam and spammers, various online spambot databases have been established on the Internet. These services of the so-called blacklist providers can be used free of charge to operate effective spam protection on your own website. These special web applications are actively searching for spammer IPs and spammer email addresses on a continuous basis. In some cases, they also accept suspected cases from those affected and check them for spam behavior. The results are stored in publicly accessible databases.
Spammers IPs and email addresses change frequently and constantly. That’s why there isn’t one database that lists all active spammers. That’s in the nature of things and if there were such a database, there would be no more spam problems.
Only hours to find and list
The online spambot databases are extremely effective in practice. New spammer IPs and spammer email addresses are usually found within a few hours and listed immediately. Therefore, using the databases offers a very high level of protection. Using multiple of these databases is exactly what our Visforms spam protection plugin does.
Sometimes spammers manage to find a whole new way to spread their spam. Then it can happen that the spammers get past the online spambot databases for several days. In this case, you can simply temporarily add a captcha to the form. Adding a captcha is just a small configuration intervention with Visforms.
Spam protection plugin enabled by default
Note: The use of the spam protection plugin is activated by default and set up with sensible default settings.
It checks the sender’s IP by default. And if the form has an Email type field, by default it also checks the entered email address against the stopforumspam.com and SpamCop.net databases.
Another good spambot database is the ProjectHoneyPot.org database. However, this database requires its own free access key before it can be used. Therefore, it is not possible to enable ProjectHoneyPot.org by default.
All settings form specific
You can adapt all the settings for the spam protection plugin to your requirements separately for each form in the form configuration under the Spam protection tab.
The spam protection plugin also offers you the option of creating a whitelist and a blacklist.
The whitelist is a list of email addresses or IP addresses that will never be blocked.
The blacklist is a list of email addresses that are always blocked.
Peculiarity of sorbs.net
The provider sorbs.net has the peculiarity that it sometimes classifies entire IP sub-networks as spam. It sometimes does this even if there is only one IP within the sub-network from which spam is sent. According to Visforms users, this leads to far too many IPs being blocked under unfavorable conditions. At the moment we are in the process of following up these indications further.
Note: We currently advise against using sorbs.net as a provider if you experience such problems.
Special features of the email whitelist
Only in exceptional cases
In principle, it should only be necessary to put people on a whitelist in exceptional cases. If a large number of your users are blocked by the plugin by mistake, you will need to adjust the plugin settings. In particular, the providers used are decisive. See also ‘Specificity of sorbs.net’ above.
Email Whitelist offers two formats
It is occasionally necessary or desirable to whitelist certain users.
The email whitelist offers you two structurally different formats:
- as a domain based list, i.e. a list of domains
in the format @domain1.com,@domain2.com, or - as a list of email addresses
in format This email address is being protected from spambots. JavaScript must be enabled to view this., This email address is being protected from spambots. JavaScript must be enabled to view this., This email address is being protected from spambots. JavaScript must be enabled to view..
First set the format
You must first specify which format you want to use with the “Email whitelist is domain based” option. This option used to be called “Allow generic email in whitelist?". You can then enter a comma-separated list of addresses in the correct format in the “E-Mail Whitelist” field. It is not possible to mix the two formats.
Difference between adjustment layers
Settings that you make in the global configuration for Visforms act as a template for defaults. They serve as a generation template when you create a new form and are only used at this point in time. Only the current settings from the form configuration are used when someone submits the form.
Settings in the form configuration
The settings in the form configuration on the Spam protection tab without explanatory texts from the inline help:
