Preventing mail form spam

painterman

Hi everyone, I'm John, a new member and a very newbie to PHP.

Okay, I'm having problems, like the rest of the world, with spam robots harvesting my contact forms.
I have a book, a recent version of WampServer and a headache😕

I am interested in implimenting the script that is on the site here:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/ian_gilfillan20060412.php3?page=2
An excellent article and I think I understand it but cannot get it to work😕

I have created a mail.php file and uploaded it onto my server, I have tried in vain to get the contact form to call up the PHP details, it's finding the mail.php file but not letting my test mails be sent.
The address of the contact form is:
http://www.paintingsandprints2.co.uk/contact.etc.......
I have removed the correct link...
If anyone could try to help me I would be more than grateful.

You all take care, you have a heck of a good forum as well.
John.

NogDog

When you say you have a spam problem, is it a problem with your form being hijacked to send spam to multiple email addresses, or a problem with them spamming the mailbox that your form is designed to send to (i.e.: it works correctly, you just receive unwanted email)?

painterman

Hi thanks for your reply to my question.

Right, my normal ForMail setup a cgi bin script, Matts script I think, set up by my server, at the moment I am getting contact forms arriving with html live links to all manner of other sites.
I just delete them and wait for the next lot, it doesn't come in great numbers but it's regular.

I suppose I just need to be able to prevent live html links being allowed, my server man says he doesn't know of any way to disable the html.

My script forces them to insert an e-mail address but I'm wondering if it's a robot at work, somehow...
In the past I keep changing the address of the contact forms, from 'contactus' to something else.
It's a pain but it works for so long.

Hope that helps..
many thanks,
John.

Xager

easy way to get rid of html tags:
htmlspecialchars

And if your page isn't that big (like mine) you don't really need to generate an image.
I've just created an image which says "What is 5+2?" and you need to enter 7. Stops most bots, if you get emails anyway try changing the question or implement a random image script.

painterman

Thanks for that, htmlspecialchars I mean, but you have lost me. :o
I just checked the link for that and I can see where it's coming from but I don't understand how I could implement them into my forms.
I do understand how to change the & to & but that's about it.

The thing is I'm only just learning how PHP works so I find things a bit tough sometimes, like now.

It's a shame I can't just do the 'add 5+2 = 7' the same way that I know how to do the 'required' function for e-mail.
Maybe I can, I hadn't thought of that.

Sorry chaps, I'm not stupid just old, well oldish.😕 as well. 🙂

roscor

try a look at this Thread

Xager

$new_text = htmlspecialchars("<a href=\"http://google.com/\">Google</a>");
echo($new_text);

This would not result in:
Google
But instead:
<a href="http://google.com/">Google</a>

So you use it like this:

$text_without_html = htmlspecialchars($text_with_possible_html);