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Unfixable contact form spam

  • caitreynolds

    (@caitreynolds)


    1 week, 6 days ago

    Hello,

    I am having an issue with contact form messages going directly to spam.

    I have experimented with multiple contact form plugins – Jetpack, Gravity, Contact 7, etc. The result is always the same.

    Things I have tried:

    – Made sure the administration email is NOT the email deleted default
    – Double-checked that the sending address from the contact form is definitely the new one email deleted
    – Set up email deleted webmail and forwarded to gmail
    – Whitelisted email deleted
    – Set up the rules in Gmail to direct email deleted messages into inbox
    – Checked with hosting provider to make sure nothing is going wrong on their end

    We have had issues with trolls and bots because this site does deal with volunteer landmine removal missions to Ukraine, and there are also a number of legitimate foreign contacts coming in via the contact page which could flag as spam. I get that. Still, unless there’s some bug planted deep in the site, I don’t understand why NONE of the contact form plugins work without sending everything to spam?

    I’m not a programmer, I’m just trying to help my friend with his website. Any help is much appreciated!

    Cait

    • This topic was modified 1 week, 6 days ago by Jan Dembowski. Reason: Moved to Fixing WordPress, this is not an Everything else WordPress topic

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • threadi

    (@threadi)

    1 week, 6 days ago

    What you didn’t mention is if you also used the anti-spam mechanisms of the respective form plugin?

    Contact Form 7 has several addons that support this, e.g:
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/cf7-antispam/
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7-honeypot/

    For Gravity Form there is also something like this:
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/gravity-forms-zero-spam/

    And of course you can also use the “ultimate all-purpose weapon”, but the reCaptcha from Google, which may be problematic due to privacy issues. Every form plugin you mentioned has a corresponding extension.

    My recommendation would be: take the plugin that suits you functionally the most and look at its anti-spam mechanisms. If necessary, talk to the support of the form plugin.

    Thread Starter caitreynolds

    (@caitreynolds)

    1 week, 6 days ago

    Hello,

    Thanks for the reply. I did forget to mention it, but I did use all those extra anti-spam mechanisms and captcha and all of that. And because this is happening no matter what contact form plugin (and extras) I use, I’m wondering if it’s a larger WordPress issue or specific to the site or…I’ve just never encountered this much of an issue with contact form-to-spam before!

    Thanks again for the suggestions!
    Cait

    threadi

    (@threadi)

    1 week, 6 days ago

    Since these forms are not part of wordpress, it cannot be a general wordpress problem. It is up to the plugin developers to provide appropriate and effective anti-spam mechanisms. Of course, there is no 100% antispam protection, no one can offer you that. But based on your description, I suspect that the tools you used were not sufficient. Therefore my recommendation is to contact the respective support who can help you more directly than the general WordPress support forum here, which does not know any forms in the frontend (except comments).

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