Hi,

My web forms are now the *****es of every spammer known. I receive thousands of spams from unscrupulous companies using blog tagging software.

How do I stop them in their tracks?!?!

I used to have a formmail that allowed me to block IP's but it got exploited and my webhost shut down my hosting until i replaced it with the NMS Formmail script which is extremely feature light.

Please help. I have a plan at the moment but it involves a shotgun and a plane ticket to the phillapeans. Any suggestions for a plan B?

To be honest with you, I like your plan A a lot better. Can I come too?

The best way I've found to stop spammers in their tracks is to let them think they can spam a form but then have some form of scoring system (ideally, proprietary) that blocks out the obvious spam. I use a combination of blocking words such as pen|s, v|agra, sperm, etc. and then a combination of the common HTML and vB code patterns such as <a href="", [url=, etc.

I have 196 regular expressions stored in a database and I check them off until I meet my spam score requirement or until all are checked off. I've done this with about a 99.7% success rate (it was higher, but three in a row got through with the word "sperm" before I could add it).

If you let them know it's being blocked or put some anti-spam measure on it, spammers will try and counter it and go to any lengths. If, however, they think it's getting through, they'll just keep using the same stupid technique that you're blocking and never bother to try anything else.

I also used a similar method to Adam but on a much smaller scale... just blocking out links and some of the more common language. Never had a problem since then. And I have it record the blocked ones so I know they're still trying xD lol

Thanks for the replies guys, i'll give it a go.

i fixed the problem by paying around $30 for a script. It's great script and since installing it I have not had 1 single form spam come through.

www.formtoemail.com - I got the pro version. Also the script didnt do exactly what I wanted it to and when I asked their support they made the necessary change for me and sent it to me. Brilliant find imo, pass it on.

install some spam filters or something along those lines. phpbb has some good mods for this.