full with spam

  • petethesweep
    Asked on July 8, 2014 at 5:00 AM

    hi

    got about 100 spam messages in past 24 hrs on some of our forms, can you reset our limits? as we now risk loosing genuine messages  - is there a way to block by country i.e. block everywhere outside the UK especially China where this stuff seems to come from, I was trying to avoid putting captcha on the forms. But will look to do this today if necessary.

     

    Simon

  • Welvin Support Team Lead
    Replied on July 8, 2014 at 9:40 AM

    Hi Simon,

    Did you remove the spam submissions? I checked your form and noticed that all of the current submissions are unique. We advise to let us check first the submissions so we can possibly add the IP Address of the spammer to our ban list.

    We also recommend adding Captcha/Re-captcha to your form. This should help you prevent spam submissions.

    Thanks

  • petethesweep
    Replied on July 8, 2014 at 11:02 AM

    Yes sorry went through and removed them, as so mad looking at the messages cluttering up my mail boxes - so if we get future spam will you be able to add IP blocks on them if we request it? from a usability point of view I would like to avoid captcha as it is one more barrier a real customer has to get a form filled in, with as few a steps as possible. I have tried testing catptcha setup but think the form limit is reached so cant submit further forms into system to see if what I have added works as expected.

    Thanks so far

    Simon

  • Welvin Support Team Lead
    Replied on July 8, 2014 at 11:19 AM

    Hi Simon,

    Yes, we should be able to block IP Address from accessing your form or in general, block access to our website. However, there are spammers that uses an extension or anonymous browser that automatically change the IP address after refreshing the page so I can't guarantee if this is a permanent solution or would prevent spammers from submitting to your form. 

    If the spammer's origin is from China, you can block China from accessing your website. However, this would prevent real users from China on submitting to your form. Blocking can be done into your web .htacess file. Check this: http://www.ip2location.com/blockvisitorsbycountry.aspx

    Thanks

  • petethesweep
    Replied on July 8, 2014 at 11:51 AM

    ok thanks will look at this as all our business, clients are based in the UK and we aren't likely to be going anytime soon to sweep chimney's or to fit / sell stoves to China

    will we have to have a paid account to get our form working again?

     

    thanks again

  • Welvin Support Team Lead
    Replied on July 8, 2014 at 12:11 PM

    I'm sorry, I already reset your counter to 10. Your forms should be up now. If not, please check and make sure that status is enabled: -How-to-Change-the-Status-of-Forms

    Thanks

     

  • petethesweep
    Replied on July 8, 2014 at 12:39 PM

    thanks this however still shows 'This form is currently unavailable!' have checked form status and it was set to enabled

  • Welvin Support Team Lead
    Replied on July 8, 2014 at 12:46 PM

    Okay, I found the cause. The form is limited to 100 submissions only. I remove the limit. You can find the settings by following this guide: http://www.jotform.com/help/137-How-to-Limit-Submissions-in-a-Form

    Thanks

  • Simon Chapman
    Replied on July 9, 2014 at 8:00 AM

    ok thanks - got whole bunch more spam messages in over night before I blocked by country with htaccess - as the various verification things I switched on I took off to get the form working when it was saying 'form unavailable'. So now you can see some samples which I have left in our mailbox fi you want to block those IP's from Jotform in general.

  • Welvin Support Team Lead
    Replied on July 9, 2014 at 10:35 AM

    I have reactivated your account and reset your limit again. Please block the spammers using the suggested method - using .htacess technique from: http://www.ip2location.com/blockvisitorsbycountry.aspx

    Thanks

  • petethesweep
    Replied on July 9, 2014 at 11:38 AM

    ok thanks - yes i used the .htacess technique to block china so far on the 3 sites that use the forms