hpr

I run a few small websites, mostly for musical groups that I play in (community bands, orchestras). Lately my FormMail forms are getting hammered by the spambots. The mail from the web forms goes to e-mail addresses on my domains that are forwarded to various people on various ISPs. Normal e-mail goes through Spam Assassin on the way in, and if the spam score is sufficiently high, the message is deleted before ever getting forwarded. Mail from FormMail does not go through Spam Assassin, and just gets forwarded on. Aside from the nuisance factor, it has gotten my (shared) IP blocked by Comcast, and I had to fill out an unblock request. I'm concerned this will happen again.

I put in a Help Desk ticket several months ago about this, trying to get to the bottom of why the FormMail form does not go through Spam Assassin (whereas all other mail does), and how to get it to do so. I got a lot of replies that didn't answer my question, and have gone back and forth and back and forth. *Finally* today I received the following reply:

>
>There are two ways to send mail using php forum or CGI script.
>
>------
>1) By connecting to port 25.
>2) By using Sendmail.
>------
>
>If the mail is being sent by connecting to port 25,
> then spamassassin will check
> them. Otherwise in later case mails will not be
> scanned.
>

So: is it possible to get a FormMail form to send by connecting to port 25, and if so, how?

My form tags currently have the following:

action="http://vermonthorns.org/cgi-sys/FormMail.cgi" method="post"

Should I be doing something different, or configure something somewhere?

If this isn't going to be possible, what else can I do to stomp out the spambots exploiting my forms? I've looked around for php CAPTCHA implementations (it would be nice if there were some CAPTCHA implemenations right in C-Panel), but haven't found anything that looks very easy, and I'm not crazy about having to do it at all, for accessibility reasons.

Is there an straightforward way to get my forms to, say, reject anything containing href html-tags? (95% of the spam is nothing but links.)

__________________
HPR

SH60

wap3

just helped a friend with their website over the weekend with this:

1) remove all words from text and control names that are bot friendly
comment, message, guest book, etc words
they are trolling for that to start off with

2) don't let the bots index any more than you have to
see #1 -- that registration page should be somewhat private/hidden

3) for my friend they have a bunch of changing check/radio boxes
[really an order form type of thing]
so put something there that a human will understand to check
[x] I agree to the Terms & Policy.....yada...yada...
well, that might be something the bots are looking for so make it a catchy statement
and maybe there really is no T&C page, or a just a link with thanks and a return button

4) do a challenge
yep Captcha is a night mare
there is a *cat*cha [or could be dogs] and you enter the number
that is that animal type from a 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 grid or random pictures
but that is not friendly to the keepers of the bandwidth

or better/easier

at Mepis Linux forums
http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/search.php
if you are not logged in then you get a question to answer
* Type the words Linux Rocks. >> [lowercase$(answer) = "linux rocks"]
* What is the sum of 5 + 9? >> [14]
* Who is the person that develops MEPIS [Warren and it is in the website]
* Who is the most awesome VP of SurpassHosting? [proper$(answer) = "Kayla"]

So your imagination is unlimited.
Can have 2 arrays -- ques() and ans() or do delimited pairs 'question~answer'
on one array PassCheck()

do some math to create an index to the Q&A
get the server time in seconds then MOD [modulo] number of entries
mod returns the remainder of the division
so server time seconds = 13 with 11 entries = 2 so use that index
of course the time seconds is huge but it still works out where
the answer will be the range 0 to Total Entries -1


make them simple and related to your site content or make them difficult like
-- What is the longest word you can type [real typing] with the left side keys?
give up yet -- abracadabra

May the gods of Creativity be with you on your quest.

__________________
--wap3

If we removed all of the "Oxygen Thiefs" [tm] from politics, maybe the earth would not have a Greenhouse Gas problem.

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