Contact Form Spam

  • gpstamper · Member ·

    Over the last few weeks or so I have been getting spam from my contact form. In the 7+ years I have had my WordPress website I had never before gotten spam, of any sort. To me this might indicate a change in spam filtering efficacy, or a more severe breach/hack into WordPress. What are your thoughts. Is anyone else noticing a distinct change in the frequency of contact form spam?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    By contact form spam do you mean messages that actually get past the spam filter, landing in WP-Admin ->Feedback, or are you seeing an increase in messages landing in the spam folder itself?

    Spammers constantly evolve their tactics to get around spam filters, which is why the spam filters we use on WordPress.com are designed to learn. If some spam is making it past the filters into the inbox, mark them as spam (don’t just delete them), and you’ll train the spam filter to block them as well. If you just delete the messages, the spam filter doesn’t learn to filter them, and they’ll just keep on coming in.

    If you’re seeing an increase of spam in the Spam folder, that just means there’s currently an influx of spam. Spam tends to come in waves, so there’s nothing strange about that. If the messages are going to the spam folder it means the filters are working the way they’re supposed to, and there’s nothing you need to do.

  • pmmgcadmin00 · Member ·

    We’re seeing lots of SPAM getting through on the contact forms. Also, would prefer to have WordPress.com delete the spam automatically, not save it in a SPAM folder.

  • staff-blorbo · Staff ·

    Is the Spam getting delivered to your email address, or the Spam folder?

    Items in the Spam folder are deleted automatically as soon as they reach 15 days in age.

  • gpstamper · Member ·

    Thank you for your comments.

    One month on from my initial feedback and here is what I’m observing –

    Some spam is actually getting delivered to my email inbox. The mail that gets through and is delivered (i.e. not sent to the Spam folder) always has a single (random) word as the message content. This is suspicious behavior and I might think could be used in WordPress spam filtering.

  • staff-blorbo · Staff ·

    Thanks! If you visit the Feedback section and mark them as Spam, it will help educate the system: https://en.support.wordpress.com/wordpress-editor/blocks/form-block/#feedback-management

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