Tyler - EZ-NetTools TechSupport support@eznettools.net |
9-6-2007 09:36 AM |
Regarding Spam:
Spam email is tough to fight when the spammers change tactics daily and use different methods of delivery. No doubt some of you have had emails spoofed and thought the spam was sent from your own email addresses. I would like to invite anyone who thinks their spam filter isn't working to contact our technical support immediately so we can resolve these issues. The spam filter isn't perfect but we are working on it.
A long needed update on the tools:
I know many of you have inquired about what we are working on and whats new. I will leave this for another post but we are working on a way to integrate a very nice feature into forms. Right now it is in the discovery stage and we are trying to find ways to best implement this code into forms. Austin one of our past Technical Support spent much time working on this code and developed a way to significantly block form spam from bots. This is a leading edge technology and we are spending time to implement this into the tools. Here are some numbers to show you what we have so far tested in the last few weeks.
The amount of spam still received was 76
The amount of spam blocked 668
The bot form code we are using is also not perfect and will block any form where the user has javascript disabled as Tom and Connie have tested for us diligently. The amount of legitimate emails received that were blocked were 4. If you feel these numbers are satisfactory then email us at support@eznettools.net and let us know and we will work harder to implement this into the tools. Like most features we are upgrading and creating we need more support and suggestions from those who use the tools daily. I know many of you have stopped posting questions and comments because you feel we leave you in the dark and do not respond. Please take this as a response and let me assure you many new and exciting things are coming. Give us a call or email us and we will let you know and maybe you can help us further. EZ-NetTools is a leading edge technology service and you are leading edge technical users and together we can help create something great and powerful and enhance what we have. |
Arba Tucker info@atlantaweddingideas.com |
11-13-2007 9:42 PM |
| I am still getting about 50 spam emails a day to a form that I deleted weeks ago! How is that happening? How can I stop it? |
Ryan ryanj@starpointemarketing.com |
11-19-2007 07:48 AM |
I'd really like to see a CAPTCHA tool enabled for the forms.
Either that, or route our email through Gmail (they offer IMAP now). |
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Tyler - EZ-NetTools TechSupport support@eznettools.net |
11-27-2007 08:55 AM |
Ryan great points to bring up. The CAPTCHA as most people may not be aware of, is the little images next to forms where you have a series of numbers, letters, and even words that you would have to enter into a box before the form can be submitted. This is a great feature for blocking those bots who are filling out our forms. Bots are not real people, they are pieces of code that are developed to fill out forms faster. The problem is that these bots are manipulated by all kinds of people both good and bad. The bad people use these bots for spamming forms. The difference between spam in your email and spammed forms is huge. You can always have a spamfilter to delete or catch your spam based on email characteristics. If you use your spamfilter for your forms then it will block all your forms and you will never get them. So you have to always receive your forms no matter who they are from just so you can get the good ones. Now you can see the big waste of time and resources bots cause people and businesses.
The CAPTCHA is a good idea although implementing it widely for the entire system is not as easy as it may seem. This is why EZ-NetTools developed a javascript code to detect if you are a bot or human. We have been beta testing this for some time now and have great results. We are not however close to implementing this code into the EZ-FormBuilder or blocks. This code can only be used in custom html forms at this time. If you would like a copy of the code you can email us directly in Technical support at support@eznettools.net and we will email you the code. We will not provide any support for the code, how to implement it, or get the existing form built by our tools in code form. |
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Ryan ryanj@starpointemarketing.com |
11-28-2007 08:09 AM |
What about a pseudo-CAPCHA? Like asking, "What color is the sky?" and requiring them to type "blue" or "What's 6 x 3" and requiring them to enter "18" in order to submit the form?
It should already be possible using the existing hidden fields etc in the FormBuilder but I'm not a script-writer.
If someone knows how this could be done, please share. |
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Tyler - EZ-NetTools TechSupport support@eznettools.net |
11-28-2007 09:00 AM |
What you mention above is a really good idea again, but the problem with this idea is bots can actually read and parse code. What I mean by that is they can see the code for the form and all the fields hidden or not and so if a field is requiring an answer like blue the bot will know and fill in the field. What should be done with this idea is a server side check where they fill out the answer and the server checks to make sure it is correct instead of the javascript code on the page.
What we are beta testing are two things. One is using hidden fields because no human will see them and try to fill them out. We test to see if there is anything filled out for that field, if it is it spams it.
Second we are testing to make sure javascript is enabled. Bots are not web browsers. Bots are pieces of code so they do not have plugins or abilities to display what your web browser can like scripts, flash, and video. All bots can do is see the code and copy it, store it, and respond. So if javascript is disabled then it will know it is a bot and spam the form. Now we understand that some people have their web browsers set to not use javascript or turn it off. Those forms will also be spammed. Because spamming legitimate forms is not a good idea we built a second measure. We built a script that takes the detected spam form and instead of deleting or spamming the form it will deliver it to an alternate email address. We have tested this and it is great. Out of a total 1,490 form submission 1,198 were sent to a spam email address that we checked once a day to make sure legitimate ones did not get spammed. 8 legitimate ones were spammed and 279 were legitimate and delivered. This was just on one form. Now you would have to check the spam email once a day maybe once a week. And it is much faster for checking for legitimate forms because you just start opening the emails and click next until you see a legitimate form submission. Once you know what you are looking for it can take less than a minute with about 100 emails to check. If you are a business owner or have better things to do this definitely helps. The huge benefit to this is the way we built the script. Your real email address where it delivers the forms is not visible to bots only the spam address. If a bot takes your email address they will spam your spam email and not your legitimate email address which reduces a lot of spam delivered to your email. |
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Ryan ryanj@starpointemarketing.com |
11-28-2007 5:50 PM |
I came across another option called email obfuscation. It's designed for putting actual email addresses on a website but I wonder if it couldn't be manipulated for forms.
Read about it at A List Apart
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Ryan Jenkins |
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