Askimet is blocking one of my Contact 7 forms

I resolved my issue by disabling Askimet and activating ReCaptcha.

Problem solved.. Wish I knew why, but for now that’s my solution.

Wanted to add this in case someone else stumbles on this thread and thinks the issue with Askimet is REALLY “fixed”.

To be clear, this actually wasn’t resolved because someone found the REAL answer as to why Askimet was blocking my volunteer application form. We still don’t know WHY Askimet is blocking our volunteer application form form but not our Contact Us form. So we sought to test another spam solution that would integrate with both our Contact 7 forms and the Charitable (our donation plugin) forms. Since we were already using Google Cloud to configure WP Mail SMTP with Google Workspace it was an easy peezy step to configure ReCaptcha.

However, once we confirmed that ReCaptcha would work for both our Contact 7 forms and our Charitable (donation plugin) forms, we activated ReCaptcha and moved on. So YES we now have a security and spam solution in place, but there is still some kind of issue with the integration between Askimet and Contact 7 that has NOT been resolved.

My recommendation to ANYONE using the Contact 7 plugin for forms beyond the standard “Contact Us” form is to forget Askimet. Configure ReCaptcha, and along with ReCaptcha, install and configure AT LEAST the basic WP Mail SMTP plugin (or one like it). Even if the ONLY form you have is your Contact Us form, you should do this anyway. ??

• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by ashewebmaster. Reason: Marking resolved

I looked through our logs for your site this week, and there didn’t appear to be any legitimate submissions of that form. Everything was either obvious spam, or attempts to test the form with gibberish or placeholder data that were also marked as spam because of how similar they were to how bots would fill it out.

If you do still think that Akismet is marking real non-test submissions as spam, the best way for us to investigate it is for you to email us at [email protected] with some examples, and we’ll dig into it.

As a seasoned IT pro, I know how Askimet and ReCaptcha work, and I would never use gibberish test data as I KNOW this will potentially trigger a spam response. I used legit data from past form submissions to populate my test submissions. I used different legit email addresses from different domains to submit my test forms. NOTHING I did should have triggered a spam response. Yet every single one of my forms was placed in the Contact 7 spam quarantine folder.

The only reason I knew the forms were submitted at all is because the HubSpot CMS plugin notified me that a form on my site was submitted. At this point I do not know if it’s Askimet, or the Contact 7 plugin’s Askimet integration. I’m am unsure why it’s only THIS ONE FORM. I don’t seem to have the issue with the Contact Us form, but the Volunteer Application form consistently marks ALL submissions as spam.

I appreciate the willingness to look into it, but I have an event that I NEED this volunteer application form working for and I’m already lost a whole week chasing this issue down and missing out on legit volunteer application submissions. ReCaptcha works right now and once the event is over I may circle back and revisit the Askimet/Contact 7 integration issue.

I used legit data from past form submissions to populate my test submissions.

For example, this was the body of one submission marked as “not spam”:

Please share any other information about yourself that you would like us to know about you. (Limit 250 - 500 wordsPlease share any other PleasPlease share any other information about yourself that you would like us to know about you. (Limit 250 - 500 wordsPlease share any other information about yourself that you would like us to know about you. (Limit 250 - 500 wordsPlease share any other information about yourself that you would like us to know about you. (Limit 250 - 500 wordsPlease share any other information ab[...]

Another submission simply copied and pasted multiple copies of the questions from the form into the reply box. These are both typical spam responses — repetitive non-original content.

If you’d like to re-enable Akismet, submit the form using your own information and real responses (even if the actual information in them is made-up), and I can confirm whether or not it’s still being caught as spam.

Right. So that’s ONE submission. There are plenty of others we submitted in our testing.

Our experience to date is that legit AND test responses are getting flagged as spam for this form and we really need to move forward as we need to collect volunteer applications to support our upcoming fundraising event. It’s a big event and it reflects BADLY with donors and volunteers on our very small non-profit to not have everything on the site working as it should. ??

I am more than happy to circle back to this in the future. I am the ONLY tech support for this organization. When I have time between my day job and the organizations events, I will circle back to this and take you up on your offer. However, right now, the organization cannot afford to have our forms behave inconsistently. The solution in pace is working. I promise that we’ll circle back to this in a few months. ??

Thanks a heap for your time. ??

• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by ashewebmaster.
• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by ashewebmaster.
• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by ashewebmaster.