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Hi,
I've noticed the Freeola form_to_mail.php script is running slowly today.
It's been working fine since you guys added extra security to stop the spammers swamping it a while back - up until today.
I had been getting a few spam emails using the Freeola script over the last few weeks (not today though) so perhaps the idiots have started attacking it again?
They always provided the from address as [email protected] in the form.
A Google on this shows the address is used a lot by spammers!
They must be running the script remotely as I don't see their IP address visiting my sites when the message arrives.
Please let me know if you need any more info.
I remember you mentioned that you now have better control/monitoring in place, is it confirming a problem?
I've noticed the Freeola form_to_mail.php script is running slowly today.
It's been working fine since you guys added extra security to stop the spammers swamping it a while back - up until today.
I had been getting a few spam emails using the Freeola script over the last few weeks (not today though) so perhaps the idiots have started attacking it again?
They always provided the from address as [email protected] in the form.
A Google on this shows the address is used a lot by spammers!
They must be running the script remotely as I don't see their IP address visiting my sites when the message arrives.
Please let me know if you need any more info.
I remember you mentioned that you now have better control/monitoring in place, is it confirming a problem?
Page:
Hi,
I've noticed the Freeola form_to_mail.php script is running slowly today.
It's been working fine since you guys added extra security to stop the spammers swamping it a while back - up until today.
I had been getting a few spam emails using the Freeola script over the last few weeks (not today though) so perhaps the idiots have started attacking it again?
They always provided the from address as [email protected] in the form.
A Google on this shows the address is used a lot by spammers!
They must be running the script remotely as I don't see their IP address visiting my sites when the message arrives.
Please let me know if you need any more info.
I remember you mentioned that you now have better control/monitoring in place, is it confirming a problem?
I've noticed the Freeola form_to_mail.php script is running slowly today.
It's been working fine since you guys added extra security to stop the spammers swamping it a while back - up until today.
I had been getting a few spam emails using the Freeola script over the last few weeks (not today though) so perhaps the idiots have started attacking it again?
They always provided the from address as [email protected] in the form.
A Google on this shows the address is used a lot by spammers!
They must be running the script remotely as I don't see their IP address visiting my sites when the message arrives.
Please let me know if you need any more info.
I remember you mentioned that you now have better control/monitoring in place, is it confirming a problem?
Sorry about that, a spammer was using a poorly secured script to send copious amounts of spam email, we spotted it and took it down (I thought before any customers noticed) and form mail should be back to normal.
ncrs wrote:
> Sorry about that, a spammer was using a poorly secured script to
> send copious amounts of spam email, we spotted it and took it
> down (I thought before any customers noticed) and form mail
> should be back to normal.
Thanks ncrs,
messages have been arriving within a couple of minutes today :)
NB. I received a handful of 'form' generated spam emails all from the same domain.
My visitor statistics which are normally very accurate, don't show any visitor to the page that matches the time. Real visitors also get re-directed to a 'thank you' type page - this also isn't getting logged?
The emails all contain suspect links and have the name field as 'goblin' and the email address '[email protected]'
This email address shows to be much abused on Google - is there anything you can do with that?
It's not causing me massive problems but when spam comes in via the Freeola form_to_mail script it always worries me that something larger may be going on.
> Sorry about that, a spammer was using a poorly secured script to
> send copious amounts of spam email, we spotted it and took it
> down (I thought before any customers noticed) and form mail
> should be back to normal.
Thanks ncrs,
messages have been arriving within a couple of minutes today :)
NB. I received a handful of 'form' generated spam emails all from the same domain.
My visitor statistics which are normally very accurate, don't show any visitor to the page that matches the time. Real visitors also get re-directed to a 'thank you' type page - this also isn't getting logged?
The emails all contain suspect links and have the name field as 'goblin' and the email address '[email protected]'
This email address shows to be much abused on Google - is there anything you can do with that?
It's not causing me massive problems but when spam comes in via the Freeola form_to_mail script it always worries me that something larger may be going on.
> This email address shows to be much abused on Google - is there
> anything you can do with that?
>
The first recommendation I would give would be to remove the mailto:link as this is the first thing that spambots harvest. If you must put your email address on the webpage, put it on as a graphic (perhaps linking to the form in question).
Looking at your website (I presume this is your own site that you are talking about) you don't appear to be using the Freeola provided script, though the one you are using looks fairly up to date, I don't know whether you have used the Freeola one recently, but it was rewritten by our head programmer from scratch a few months ago, and we have not had any problems since that was done.
> anything you can do with that?
>
The first recommendation I would give would be to remove the mailto:link as this is the first thing that spambots harvest. If you must put your email address on the webpage, put it on as a graphic (perhaps linking to the form in question).
Looking at your website (I presume this is your own site that you are talking about) you don't appear to be using the Freeola provided script, though the one you are using looks fairly up to date, I don't know whether you have used the Freeola one recently, but it was rewritten by our head programmer from scratch a few months ago, and we have not had any problems since that was done.
ncrs wrote:
> This email address shows to be much abused on Google - is there
> anything you can do with that?
>
> The first recommendation I would give would be to remove the
> mailto:link as this is the first thing that spambots harvest.
> If you must put your email address on the webpage, put it on as
> a graphic (perhaps linking to the form in question).
>
> Looking at your website (I presume this is your own site that
> you are talking about) you don't appear to be using the Freeola
> provided script, though the one you are using looks fairly up to
> date, I don't know whether you have used the Freeola one
> recently, but it was rewritten by our head programmer from
> scratch a few months ago, and we have not had any problems since
> that was done.
Thanks for the reply.
The email is coming from a 'FORM' not direct to the email address - so it's not a harvesting problem in the normal sense. i.e. The fields in the form are being completed and the email arrives as if someone has completed the form. The message has the normal site's Freeola email address as the 'from' address etc.
No the problem isn't with my site that uses a custom script - I don't have any problems with that one - that script also logs the message so that I can read it via the website if the mail server should get swamped. I introduced that when 'we' had the previous form_to_mail problems.
The 'form spam' comes from a site using the bog standard Freeola script!
> This email address shows to be much abused on Google - is there
> anything you can do with that?
>
> The first recommendation I would give would be to remove the
> mailto:link as this is the first thing that spambots harvest.
> If you must put your email address on the webpage, put it on as
> a graphic (perhaps linking to the form in question).
>
> Looking at your website (I presume this is your own site that
> you are talking about) you don't appear to be using the Freeola
> provided script, though the one you are using looks fairly up to
> date, I don't know whether you have used the Freeola one
> recently, but it was rewritten by our head programmer from
> scratch a few months ago, and we have not had any problems since
> that was done.
Thanks for the reply.
The email is coming from a 'FORM' not direct to the email address - so it's not a harvesting problem in the normal sense. i.e. The fields in the form are being completed and the email arrives as if someone has completed the form. The message has the normal site's Freeola email address as the 'from' address etc.
No the problem isn't with my site that uses a custom script - I don't have any problems with that one - that script also logs the message so that I can read it via the website if the mail server should get swamped. I introduced that when 'we' had the previous form_to_mail problems.
The 'form spam' comes from a site using the bog standard Freeola script!
>
> No the problem isn't with my site that uses a custom script - I
> don't have any problems with that one - that script also logs
> the message so that I can read it via the website if the mail
> server should get swamped. I introduced that when 'we' had the
> previous form_to_mail problems.
>
> The 'form spam' comes from a site using the bog standard Freeola
> script!
Not had any other complaints (to my knowledge) about the freeola hosted script, it is not a perfect solution (because the email address you are sending to has to be included within the form tags and thus has a potential to be harvested), but that is one of the problems with a generic script rather than a dedicated one where you can include email within the script itself.
The only other thing we could do to avoid abuse I think would be to add a image generator (similar to when you create a email address within MyFreeola), I am reluctant to go that way however as I think that has the potential to be unpopular with customers.
If yourself or any of the other web developers who read these forums (if any;)) have any suggestions for improvements to the form do post, and I will pass them on to the programmers.
> No the problem isn't with my site that uses a custom script - I
> don't have any problems with that one - that script also logs
> the message so that I can read it via the website if the mail
> server should get swamped. I introduced that when 'we' had the
> previous form_to_mail problems.
>
> The 'form spam' comes from a site using the bog standard Freeola
> script!
Not had any other complaints (to my knowledge) about the freeola hosted script, it is not a perfect solution (because the email address you are sending to has to be included within the form tags and thus has a potential to be harvested), but that is one of the problems with a generic script rather than a dedicated one where you can include email within the script itself.
The only other thing we could do to avoid abuse I think would be to add a image generator (similar to when you create a email address within MyFreeola), I am reluctant to go that way however as I think that has the potential to be unpopular with customers.
If yourself or any of the other web developers who read these forums (if any;)) have any suggestions for improvements to the form do post, and I will pass them on to the programmers.
I think that adding the generator thing would be a good thing as an avid online shopper I see more and more sites adopoting that approach, if it could be added to the freeola script I think that would be fantastic! how about you have two scripts one with the random image generator and one without then user can choose which method they prefer?
Kev
Kev
Digitrader wrote:
> I think that adding the generator thing would be a good thing as
> an avid online shopper I see more and more sites adopoting that
> approach, if it could be added to the freeola script I think
> that would be fantastic! how about you have two scripts one with
> the random image generator and one without then user can choose
> which method they prefer?
>
> Kev
I will pass this along to the programmers, off the top of my head, we would keep the current script but have the other script available to use where it would post to a confirmation page where the user would enter the alphanumerics shown. Don't think it would take long to program, though I am not an expert.
> I think that adding the generator thing would be a good thing as
> an avid online shopper I see more and more sites adopoting that
> approach, if it could be added to the freeola script I think
> that would be fantastic! how about you have two scripts one with
> the random image generator and one without then user can choose
> which method they prefer?
>
> Kev
I will pass this along to the programmers, off the top of my head, we would keep the current script but have the other script available to use where it would post to a confirmation page where the user would enter the alphanumerics shown. Don't think it would take long to program, though I am not an expert.
Hi ncr am no expert either but I do know that the alphanumerics are good as only a human can enter them, so it should reduce almost eliminate spam mailings through the form.
Kev
(4hours with no p[ower today Arrrgh)
Kev
(4hours with no p[ower today Arrrgh)
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