The spam bots hit my sendmessage.php...
 

For the first time I ever I just received a whole load of spam through my contact us form. Admittedly, guests are able to post but I'd never heard of them using the vB form before. Does anyone else get much of a problem with this?

maybe add image verification?

I didn't realise that was possible, I generally just upgrade vB for security and never check out the new features. :D

Image Verifaction would be a good thing for it... maybe just disable it, that might be a better approach? I never see anyone use it on any of the sites I run.

I get the majority of my incoming email through it so I can't disable it, and I don't want to list a contact address on the site if I don't have to, I had to change the last one because so many spam lists decided to acquire me.

Make an extra field in the template for the sendmessage.php:

Then somewhere in sendmessage.php where it accepts the incoming post call to send the email put:

In the extra CSS box when editing a style's css put:

The logic behind this method is that the spambot can't tell it's a hidden field unless it's smart enough to check the corresponding CSS class. Therefore it'll fill it in and you can check within your PHP script to see that it's been filled in and hence exit the script before sending out the email. Some spambots are smart enough to refer back to the appropriate CSS but this'll stop 90% of the incoming spam.

good one dean:)

but i use the image verf, look in the register.php file or the /includes/functions_register.php file:) in there is code for image verification. i personally image verification for guest posting;)

Can anyone post instructions for how to add image verification to sendmessage.php?

This is something quite a few would find useful. The spammers ARE starting to hit sendmessage.php now, I am getting loads.

take a look at my new thread/post image verf. hack. just addlib a little with it and it should work;)

Cheers...have done so, and also studied register.php and the register template, and have come up with it, I think....

http://www.bowlandcentral.com/forum/sendmessage.php

It would be great if you could release it :) Many people would be grateful!

I'm not sure how good my coding is. :(

All I've done is pasted bits from register.php into sendmessage.php, then created a new phrase, then pasted a bit of the register template into the contact us template but it's not very clean as I am still calling the register phrases rather than creating a new set.

It seems to work but I'm not 100% sure if it's ok.

Put it in Beta Modifications and let people test it and give you feedback then