Contact form spam still getting views

  • Resolved unsustainable

    (@unsustainable)


    4 years, 8 months ago

    Hi all,
    I’m having a problem that originated with jetpack’s contact form, so hopefully someone here is able to help.

    I had the contact form up on my site for a month or so.
    I soon started received spam messages in groups of 4 with titles like “adult dating sites around your city”.
    I deleted these as soon as they arrived in my email inbox, but didn’t realise they were still somehow “live” on my site until I saw them appearing in my page view stats.
    Now I’ve deleted them all, but two months later I’m still getting hits on them.

    I thought given time Google would stop sending traffic to these non existent pages, but apparently not.
    Any ideas?

    Many thanks,
    Brett

    P.S. This is about contact form, not comment form

    https://photos.app.goo.gl/YXgNvC821VMi6sWj9

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Support Fotis

    (@fstat)

    Hi there,

    Contact form submissions are not publicly visible. Only you can see them. What’s your site’s address so I can have a closer look?

    Thread Starter unsustainable

    (@unsustainable)

    Strange then that my android WordPress app shows that they’re somehow getting views. Thanks for the help.

    https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com is the address.

    Plugin Support KokkieH

    (@kokkieh)

    This is spam. A specific type of referrer spam.

    What’s happening here is that someone is linking to content on your site, but they’re spoofing the referrer headers their site sends when someone clicks that link, to have a link to their site appear in your stats instead. Some websites publish analytics data like this, which means you inadvertently end up promoting their site for them.

    As long as you don’t visit these links no harm, like malware being installed on your computer, can come to you, and it cannot harm your site in any way. It’s also not visible to any visitors to your site, as this text and link are just being inserted into your stats, which only you can see.

    While it’s technically possible to block or filter referrer spam like this (and Jetpack does to some extent), it’s a losing battle, as the spammer would just need to change their domain or IP to get their fake referrals through again, so it’s really best to just ignore it.

    Thread Starter unsustainable

    (@unsustainable)

    Thanks very much! You’ve explained it and allayed my fears ??

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