Help - spam through Contact Us page

[Countrymun]

Really hoping someone can help to solve this mystery.
We have a page on our website with a contact form that customers can use to send a query.

It is reached via a clickable link on the home page.
Unfortunately, for the past month, it has been inundated with spam - sometimes upto 50 messages a day. Worse, since the form is on our website, the messages show as originating from us (to us!) so googlemail doesn't mark them as spam since they appear to have come from us. Hope that makes sense!

Before Christmas, I decided it would be best to simply delete the page and let people use our email address instead. That way, google would hopefully pick up a lot of the spam.
The problem is ... I can't seem to find the page in backend to delete it. I have searched CMS under pages (and even static blocks) but the only ContactUs page I can find is an old one which is disabled.

Really grateful if anyone can help. I know links aren't allowed so I haven't included the full link but it's a https url with our web name and ending /contacts/ - just in case that helps at all.
I just don't understand why I can't find the page in the backend.

Many thanks
Mollie

 

[zigojacko]

If you want to delete the default Magento contact us page (/contacts), then in your Magento admin panel just go to:-

System > Configuration > GENERAL > Contacts > Contact Us

And set 'Enable Contact Us' to 'No'.

It doesn't actually exist as a CMS page by default.

 

[bharris]

We had this problem a year or so ago. We installed a Google Invisible Captcha module from Amasty which worked well. It was free but it looks like they now charge. Just in case you really want to keep the contact form.

 

[zigojacko]

Totally. There's lots of ways to combat spam through forms on a website, the above being one of them and it's probably also worth noting, that removing the contact form but displaying the email address on the website instead won't stop spam. Loads of bots harvest email addresses from websites and then you just end up getting the same spam sent directly through email too.

Although there is specifically a lot of bots targeting Magento contact forms and customer registration forms anyhow. There is actually a captcha built into Magento by default that you can choose to use on the various default forms (depends on the version of Magento).

 

[GraemeL]

I am getting about 50 a day also, but they now all go into spam. The default 'contact us' form on Opencart creates a header with the word 'Enquiry' at the start. So I diverted all with that in the subject into spam.

Also put a message on 'contact us' page that says "To avoid our spam filters please start your enquiry with HELLO" and set up a rule that allows those through.

 

[Countrymun]

Ah - thank you so much for that. I have just actually found a similar query from someone else on the forum. A solution was suggested - to add a new invisible text box that only bots would fill in - and then message would be rejected. But that would require me to know where the form was
But thank you - if I can't find how to edit the form then I will delete it.
Thank you again - much appreciated.

 

[Countrymun]

Thanks again - yes, I found a capcha but I hate those things - apparently I never get them right myself so I don't want to put others through it if possible.
I have now disabled the Contact Us form - I couldn't see any way to edit it to include the invisible box mentioned in the summer postings.
But it was not a minute too soon - google stopped us sending any mail for 24 hours because they said we had reached our limit (we hadn't - but clearly the form spam had done).
Many thanks again - the help is really appreciated

 

[Deleted member 106254]

I've had the same problem, also since Christmas. I'm not sure if it's related to the 1.9.4 version upgrade or not but it started around the same time.
I stopped our spam by installing nomorespam by Moogento which is free.

 

[HFE Signs]

We experienced this, it all stopped when we installed Captcha, I'd expect it's being driven by robots

 

[Countrymun]

@mysitemanager - do you know if it solves the same issue with new customer accounts?
We removed our contact form and thought all was okay - but now Russian spam is filling pages with new customer sign-ups - putting their sales messages in the customer name field. I didn't think it would even allow people to enter 250 words in there!
I am worried that fairly soon Gmail will restrict our emails again since the system automatically sends out a welcome email to every new customer (300 since last night!)
Many thanks

 

[elsnermagento]

Better option is use chatbot rather then contact us form

 

[bharris]

Personally i HATE chatbot's i find them a complete waste of time and 99.99999% of the time i have to send an email to actually get an answer to the issue i have.

 

[alan1302]

Better option is use chatbot rather then contact us form

Is a chatbot some kind of automated system?

 

[Deleted member 106254]

@mysitemanager - do you know if it solves the same issue with new customer accounts?
We removed our contact form and thought all was okay - but now Russian spam is filling pages with new customer sign-ups - putting their sales messages in the customer name field. I didn't think it would even allow people to enter 250 words in there!
I am worried that fairly soon Gmail will restrict our emails again since the system automatically sends out a welcome email to every new customer (300 since last night!)
Many thanks

Hi, no it doesn't stop those sign ups. This extension helps with that though:
https://amasty.com/email-blacklist.html

 

[Countrymun]

Many thanks @mysitemanager. They also have at least a couple of other extensions that would be useful so will definitely try this!