Anti-Spam by Fullworks : GDPR Compliant Spam Protection

Description

Fed up with being overwhelmed with WP comment spam?! Say goodbye to those pesky spambots for good with this fantastic WordPress plugin!

Introducing the ultimate anti-spam solution – our plugin detects spam bots with laser-like precision to keep your comments section sparkling clean. And it does it all without annoying your real readers with tedious captchas.

Just install and activate for immediate spam-zapping powers! Sayonara spam, hello helpful conversations!

Good news, it’s a totally free download for personal, commercial and business sites alike. No keys, no catches – just spam-vanquishing joy.

Check out the rave reviews! Your comment auto-spammers don’t stand a chance against this anti-bot. This is the spam-slaying champion you’ve been searching for.

Tired of spam clutter? Want to easily moderate a spam-free zone? Our plugin is the answer – your new best friend in the never-ending war against comment junk.

If you need a brilliant bot-blocker that just works, look no further than this fantastic anti-bot hero!

Additionally, the plugin has custom allow/deny rules for email patterns, IP and IP subnets and text string patterns, jut can block even more than just bot comment spam, by making up your own rules. Putting you in control.

Anti Spam Protection Free Features

• It stores suspected spam comments in the moderation queue for review.
• Comments marked as spam can be automatically deleted after a set number of days.
• It also manages comments submitted through the wpDiscuz plugin.
• There is an option to set the spam retention period.
• Can be used alongside other security and spam prevention plugins, such as Akismet and Anti-Spam Bee.
• For sites with large volumes of historic spam, it will automatically clean up past comments marked as spam.
• It is GDPR compliant and allows opting in/out of anonymously submitting spam/ham reports.
• No cookies are used for spam/bot detection.
• Custom allow/deny lists can be set for IP addresses, email patterns and text.

It is FREE

Free for any use, personal, commercial, and business sites with no API key required.

We are able to provide this free plugin because we have a Pro version that enables us to fund the development of this free plugin and pay for the avocado on toast that our developers insist on having for breakfast every morning.
Let’s just say it isn’t cheap to keep that lot happy! But we love ’em really, even if they do spend half the day napping and the other half moaning about how hard they’re working.
As long as the cash keeps rolling in from you top chaps who purchase the Pro version, the freebies will keep on coming and the developers will continue living the dream (or nightmare depending on who you ask!). So in summary – buy the Pro version and you’ll not only get some swanky new features but you’ll also be indirectly paying for the livelihood of a bunch of scoundrels who wouldn’t last 5 minutes in a real job. Bargain!

It Works

Check out our reviews, and you’ll find that Fullworks Anti Spam is widely recognized as an anti-spam solution that truly stops spam comments on your blog posts.

It is good for SEO

How can an anti-spam plugin improve SEO? Well they can’t but they can damage SEO by damaging performance. Other well known anti spam plugins make calls to the cloud to analyse
comments and this can slow down your site. This plugin is fast and lightweight and so by using this plugin, over some others, you can be avoiding damaging your SEO.

It is good for Security

How can spam protection improve security? The biggest threat to website or any technology security is ‘Social Engineering’ where people are tricked into revealing credentials. These attacks all start with an out of the blue contact
, maybe a phishing link or maybe something else believable, once hooked the hackers dig in. All these types of attacks start with a contact, such as a comment on a post. The majority of these attacks start with an automated (bot) campaign. This free plugin protects your blog comments from these auto campaigns.

It is easy to use

The plugin is designed to be ‘set and forget’. Once installed it will start protecting you from spam. You can review the spam comments if you wish, but you don’t have to.

It is safe

The free plugin does not send any data to any third party. It does not use cookies. It does not track users. It does not collect any personal data.

Go Pro

Our view is the free version should deal with the most prolific spam elements that come with the free blogging platform, namely comments.

And the Pro version should be affordable to the smallest of businesses and deal with the more sophisticated spam elements that plague them, namely contact forms and registration forms.

Upgrade to ‘Pro’ from within your WordPress dashboard to get these further pro anti spam features

• Three extra levels of spam protection

  • IP Blocklist checking using industry spam list
  • Statistical text analysis to determine spam probability
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) natural language server to beat the most creative spammers

• Help with GDPR and privacy laws

  • Option to not send any third party data to the AI server but still have local AI spam detection through machine learning textual analysis, no need for a DPA / SCC

• Protect forms

  • Jetpack contact form
  • Contact Form 7
  • Gravity Forms
  • WP Forms
  • Quick Contact Form
  • Fluent Forms
    ( and more in the pipeline )

• Message Store

  • Store message for ham / spam review and deletion for plugins that don’t have their own message store (optional)
    • Contact Form 7
    • WP Forms Lite
    • Fluent Forms

• Stops phantom registrations

  • WooCommerce
  • WordPress users

• No limits on number of detections

• Automatically block and discard the worst spam
• Control spam retention
• Automatic spam statistics reporting
• Optional spam notifications alerts, so you can review them
• Set your own Allow or Deny lists of IP addresses, email patterns and text patterns

Free trial, sign up directly from the plugin settings page.

Or visit the Pro product page

Privacy and GDPR

This free plugin does not collect, process or send any website visitor personal data anywhere unless you chose to opt in to sharing the spam comments you mark as spam or ham with our spam detection server.

PHP 8.3

Tested against PHP 8.3

Installation

Through Dashboard

1. Log in to your WordPress admin panel and go to Plugins -> Add New
2. Type find the plugin using the search box
3. Then click on Install Now and after that Activate the plugin.
4. You do not have to Opt In that is optional, you may skip
5. The plugin is set up and protecting you from automated comment spam

Installing Via FTP

1. Download the plugin to your hardisk.
2. Unzip.
3. Upload the plugin folder into your plugins directory.
4. Log in to your WordPress admin panel and click the Plugins menu.
5. Then activate the plugin.
6. You do not have to Opt In that is optional, you may skip
7. The plugin is set up and protecting you from automated comment spam

FAQ

Why use this plugin and not one of the others?

A great question. The most popular anti-spam plugin for WordPress is Akismet. Akismet is shipped wil the initial install of WordPress giving the impression that it is the most appropriate
plugin for comment spam. It is not until you try and use Akismet that you find out that that you have to sign up for an API Key, and then discover that for the vast majority of websites Akismet
is not a free anti-spam plugin. Akismet is not free for any website that has any commercial purpose, that means if you hav ean affiliate link or a single advert or sell something or advertise something for sale, or just simply use your website as a brochure for your business
you have to pay Akismet a fee. And it not cheap. They also say that they monitor and check for licence abuse.

Another popular WordPress anti spam plugin, Clean Talk, is not free at all, for anything. You need to sign up to a plan.

After that, there are loads of anti spam plugins that have been around a while. Because they have been around awhile they have built up a high number of users, but a high number of users for an anti spam plugin doesn’t necessarily mean it is effective.
Many of these established plugin are free and have no sustainable revenue stream to pay for developments and improvements in the fight against WordPress spam.

And then there are security plugins, that also do anti-spam. There are many good security plugins, but there strength is security, not necessarily anti spam.

In conclusion, Fullworks Anti Spam is a relatively new entrant (2019) to an area with lots of competition. Competition is healthy. What Fullworks Anti Spam has going for it is free for Comment spam and it is new so uses the latest techniques. Also with a pro offering, it has funding to keep
developing in the never ending fight against spammers.

How does it work?

The plugin uses techniques to detect automated spam (bots). Bot have certain characteristics that can be detected by our software. When a comment is submitted by a bot it is marked as spam and appears in your comment list under a separate tab as spam.
The comment is there for you to review. The plugin also cleans up after a certain number of days, that you set in settings. After a while, once you are convinced all the comments are really spam
( we are confident, but we understand you may want to check things out ) you can set the time to zero days and then never see automated spam again. This is why we call it Stop WordPress Spam.

Where are the settings?

As a ‘set and forget’ plugin the settings a under Dashboard>Settings>Anti Spam

There is only one setting, enable or disable blocking of bot (automated) comment spam, by default this is on.

It only handles automated spam, what about human spam?

Our statistic shows that automated comment spam makes up 99.5% of spam comments, that means that in a typical unprotected blog that gets 600 spam comments you have 3 humans spam comments to deal with.
I’m sure that is manageable, but of course if you want to eliminate those you can always upgrade to Pro

Why is form protection only in Pro, can’t it be in free?

It is important for plugins to be commercially viable. If they are not, they wither and die. You see so many abandoned free plugins. Isn’t that just annoying when you find after a couple of years
you need to find an alternative? We have chosen to put contact form anti spam and registration form anti spam in the Pro version so we can have a revenue stream to keep developing anti spam protection.
Contact form spam is the higher volume issue, and most websites with contact forms or WooCommerce registration forms are business websites that should easily be able to afford our modest fees
for the Pro version. It is surprisingly small investment – why not upgrade? Upgrade to Pro

What happens to the spam comments?

Each spam comment is stored under the comments>spam tab for your review and deletion as required

Does it work on contact or registration forms?

The free plugin is an anti-bot, built to protect WordPress comments from spam bots which is 99% of the issue. The Pro version has more sophisticated spam detection techiques including
machine learning to prevent human spam and integration to most forms packages. As most sites that have forms are commercial in some form we feel that
it is only right that they pay a small amount towards the cost of software and hardware required to provide these features.
You can upgrade to a free trial of pro directly from your WordPress plugins page.

Do I have to Opt In or use and API key?

Whilst there is an Opt In form, if you skip it the free plugin works exactly the same.

Why is the free version limited to bot based comment spam?

We have chosen to limit the free version to bot based comment spam to keep this www.remarpro.com plugin absolutely free.
By putting contact form anti spam and registration form anti spam in the Pro version we can have a revenue stream to keep developing anti spam protection.
Spammers don’t stop so we need to keep developing.
Most websites with contact forms or WooCommerce registration forms are business websites that should easily be able to afford our modest fees
for the Pro version. It is surprisingly small investment – why not upgrade? Upgrade to Pro

How can I report security bugs?

You can report security bugs through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team help validate, triage and handle any security vulnerabilities. Report a security vulnerability.

Reviews

Unbelievably Effective!

maestrosersea October 4, 2024

I remember the times I was bombarded with hundreds and thousands of quite inapropriate spam on my numerous Wordpress sites. It took a lot of time, energy, and patience to clear that up. Then, I found Anti-Spam by Fullworks. I couldn’t believe such a plugin could be free AND effective. Yet, for years I used the free version of Anti-Spam by Fullworks on my more than 25 educational Wordpress sites with no issue whatsoever. Instead of dealing with spam, I used my extra time on building content. I liked this plugin so much that I now have the paid version on all my sites.

I like pluigns like this

Graham October 2, 2024 1 reply

Unlike Akismet which needs an API key and a whole load of limitations this one just works. And works really well. Highly recommended

Install and forget

Valerio Vaz October 1, 2024

I had a site with multiple spam entries and I’ve tried a couple of options. None had the efficiency of this plugin. I highly recommend

It just works

gelform September 11, 2024

I love that I don’t have to fight with this anymore. So simple. Can’t recommend enough.

Simple – and it does its job well

nuithon December 7, 2022 1 reply

Not bloated with features. But it seems to have everything that one needs for an antispam plugin. Very simple to install and to use. Affordable too. And support answers questions in a prompt and friendly way. Just make sure to use a contact form that is compatible with Fullworks Anti Spam, in order for the plugin to cover your site against spam fully (including human spam and not only bots). In case your contact form is not on the list, ask support – in some cases, they can find a solution.

Works with AJAX lazy loaded comments!

itsryu February 5, 2022 2 replies

Works with latest release and I think this is the only plugin that works with AJAX lazy loaded comments. Developer fixed issue that evening. Wow!

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

2.3.10

• Fix issue with reporting spam

2.3.9

• improve IP blocklist logic ( Pro Only )

2.3.8

• improve spam alert cron ( Pro Only )
• fix Gravity Forms spam alerts ( Pro Only )

2.3.7

• update tested 6.7
• upgrade freemius library

2.3.6

• Change bot detection messages for improved clarity

2.3.5

• Fix issue with comment saving
• change honeypot sensitivity

2.3.4

• Fix issue with CF7 and PHP 7.4.33 ( Pro Only )

2.3.3

• Fix issue where badly configured CF7 reCaptcha bypasses Fullworks Anti Spam ( Pro Only )

2.3.2

• Improve industry IP blocklists to reduce false positives ( Pro Only )

2.3.1

• Fix Gravity form specific selector ( Pro Only )

2.3

• Add integration of WSForm:
• Add GDPR+ Pro level ( Pro Only )

2.2.1

• Ensure comment spam protection applied, even if comments closed on new posts

2.2

• Add spam level property ( Pro Only )

• tidy up some warnings

• fix possible fatal error in free version

2.1.4

• add extra comment form selector,
• fix bug when two anti spam systems running
• fix possible fatal error in free version

2.1.3

• Add stricter type checking due to PHP 7.4 inconsistencies

2.1.2

• improve bot detection when cache plugins used

2.1.1

• remove unused action_scheduler library

2.1

• Add API to allow any form system or plugin to utilize Fullworks Anti Spam if installed
• Make single word is spam optional
• Import and export CSV of Allow Deny Rules to make custom configuration scalable

2.0.1

• update honeypot mutation observer to better handle Gravity Forms Legacy markup ( Pro Only )

2.0

• Added Allow Deny lists for IP addresses, email patterns and text patterns
• Opt in or out to share spam or ham data with our spam detection server to help with privacy compliance
• Add form level control over protection for Gravity Forms ( Pro Only )
• Add email logging for Contact Forms 7 and WP Forms Lite ( Pro Only )
• Added AI Server detections of human spam and other features ( Pro Only )
• Added Fluent Forms ( Pro Only )

1.3.12

• Freemius SDK library update to 2.6.2

1.3.11

• Freemius SDK library update to 2.6.0

1.3.10

• Freemius SDK update to 2.5.10

1.3.9

• Fix monthly report template

1.3.8

• Handle wpDiscuz comments

1.3.7

• updated translation strings
• added JetPack contact form protection ( Pro Only )

Full Change History