Spam From Lead Capture

Hi,

We are getting a lot of spam from the lead capture. I know there is a Captcha but where can I find it?

I read the other thread about this issue but it's not there as written below.....

Go to

Appearance > Theme Option > Lead Capture Settings > Captcha On/Off and turn it On.

I can not find it there.... where is it? Was this in an old theme?

Thanks,

 

Do let us know your website link.

 

Greetings Team

And the same is happeing on my site.

here is the email (luckly these are all coming to me)

Code:

Listing Title: North South Flowers
User Name: Jaden
Message: Get a job <a href=\" http://dsalo.info/presentations/ \">prescription retin a online</a>  (and research hypothesis, if
 
Email: [email protected]
Contact Number: [email protected]

They are using the lead capture to send spam emails

www.nzcbd.co.nz

 

Hello,
Leadcapture form contain captcha, So auto spamming is not possible. But sometimes peoples enter captcha code manually and send spam email.
So can't do much in it.

 

Hi Gourav,

Please attache a screenshot of where to activate the Captcha, like I said, the above instructions do not get me there. I have updated to the latest version.

Don't ask me for my website link. I need instructions where to activate captcha with screenshot.

Thanks and have a great weekend!
Marc

 

Hey Marc1

I tested my the contact business form on my site as it is out of the box - if you do not fill in the captcha section it wont let you send the message.

There is no actual place where you turn captcha on or off it is coded into the the form itself.

You can turn the whole form off - meaning so no contact business form shows next to the listing and that can be done from Goecraft settings>>>theme options>>>Listing Settings.

Hope that is of some help.

 

Hey NZCID, thanks for the info. For now we have disabled it but this should not be happening.

This is clearly a spam bot that can bypass the captcha of the lead gen form. Here is anexample of just one of many of these spam comments from the lead capture:

User Name: cheap iphone 5
Message: stating that the actual Chanel purses tend to be
Email: [email protected]
Contact Number: cheap iphone 5

There are over 20 of these that have come through in the past fortnight, do
you have details of these?

Maybe this lead capture captcha needs to be more sophisticated to stop this from happening. We had numerous clients complaint, this is not done automatically, it's a spam bot.

Gourav, are you planning to make this captcha better to prevent this from happening?

Thanks,
Marc

 

Hey Marc1

I posted the one spam entry we have had, above and was told maybe someone manually entered it. Seeing I cannot aruge with that as I only had one I have left it at that, but if you have had a large number then it appears the form is open to spam bots. Personally I do not bleive someone manually entered the data as it looks like the work of a bot not a human being.

Numerical captcha is easy to get around I guess if you want to waste time programming bots to do, and it certainly creates anightmare for the site owner when paid lisitng members complain they are getting spam via this contact form. It is getting tougher and tougher to manage these damn bots and the security around contact froms needs to be really tight these days.

What does the Inkthemes team have to say on this matter as it maybe appears the captcha being used on these forms has been comprimised?

 

Okay had some more spam entries via the contact from for businesses and like Marc1 I have now turned this form off.

So I have to agree with Marc1 the captcha in these forms is being bypassed somehow by a bot and this needs fixing. I would suggest other users maybe getting these entries, or I should say the lister is and they are not reporting them back to the site admin.

If any other user is having these issues it be great if you add to this thread. The bot appears to be coming from Russia on my site.

 

You are correct the bots can bypass captcha easily I'm surprised Developers of these themes do not realize that.
all they need is an account with a service that can read the captcha do a search on Google you will find hundreds.
Here's one http://de-captcher.com/
I have found that the best way to prevent Bots is Are you Human Plugin or the Sweet captcha Plugin
But you will need to try it as I don't think the theme Follows Standard WordPress Hooks for captcha Plugins
Also There are Services that have hundreds of people go down lists to register and or send out spam emails via contact forms manually.
The authors of this theme need to realize that we need to allow the plugins to Handle the Captcha So we can use the Free graphic captcha services.

What helps also is Wordfence Plugin to protect your site. you can block ip address's with it and with the paid version block full country's
I also found for registration Stop Spammer Registrations Plugin works great it will check spam haus, Stop forum spam, askimet, and Bot Scout.

I hope I have helped and I hope the theme developers consider to drop Captcha and let the plugins handle it or at least let us turn it off and let the plugins handle Captcha
I'm stepping down from my soap box now/ lets see if the developers are listening.

 

Hey n2rga

Thanks for the input.

I have tried several of the main captcher plug-in, they wont work with the theme so in essence the theme needs to eb coded to allow captcha plug-ins to work.

I am stuck for the time being as well as Marc1 in having to turn this form off to stop all the spam coming through.

I do use the sweet captcha plug-ins on my other sites and have no issues from any of the forms used on those sites.

Gourav with this information being given what is the GeoCraft team going to do to resolve this issue?

Many thanks