Spambots sending blank emails via contact form – how?

  • I use Contact form 7 on a couple of sites and more and more recently I am getting email from spammers (bots) but with no content. No Subject and no Message which should in theory be impossible due to my form rule:

    [textarea* your-message minlength:20 maxlength:5000]

    Over time I have managed to cut down form spam to almost nothing by setting keywords in WordPress Settings -> Discussion -> Disallowed Comment Keys. But my guess is the spambots are attempting to send spam messages, getting denied by my keywords but for some reason still managing to send a blank email with only a “from” name/email.

    Of course, a blank email is better than a spam-filled email but I wondered if anyone knows how these spam bots are getting around the form rules and if there is anything I can do to stop this?

    I am using the latest at this time (5.7.7) version. I also use the Honeypot plugin 2.1.1

    I also checked the source of the emails to see if they had special/hidden characters rather than truly blank subject/body but they don’t seem to – the subject/body does seem to be blank.

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

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