Prank emails from contact form

  • I don’t think there is a solution for this nuisance, but thought I would check with the helpful experts here. One of my sites has become reasonably popular with LeapPad users – young kids. One thing they seem to enjoy is sending prank emails from my contact form – usually just a nonsense string of characters or sometimes a mild word like ‘poop’. Because of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, I can’t require name or email address, so I can’t try using Akismet for this.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    I think you’ll have to deal with this at the email service provider end. For instance, in Google and Outlook you can filter emails to spam based on certain rules.

    Thread Starter aCstudent

    (@acstudent)

    Thank you Andrew. I’ll give that a try.

    How about the next time it happens you take a look at your referrer logs and see if you can find out the ‘user agent’ string then block that via htaccess?

    You might even find that info on the web somewhere…

    You’ll need to consider also if the web browser used might be one of the popular Android browsers. A search for Leap Pad user agent didn’t really offer anything. Maybe it’s a mobile browser you won’t want to block either.

    It’s also possible to pinpoint the IP address in the logs so you might just start blocking those IP addresses. Your webserver probably captures a good bit of info about your visitors without compromising their ID. A little sleuthing and a little educated guessing might help you.

    The thing about kids is there’s probably a few together who are either working from the same location or they exchange notes. You might even find you can block by CIDR and rid yourself of a whole classroom, library, or neighborhood sometimes.

    https://freetools.webmasterworld.com/tools/htaccess-block-user-agent/

    https://www.htaccesstools.com/block-ips/

    Thread Starter aCstudent

    (@acstudent)

    Thank you JNashHawkins, I will look into your suggestions. Much appreciated.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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