I'm reaching out for help with a spam problem on my client's website where we're using GravityForms on WordPress. Despite having multiple anti-spam measures in place—like Akismet, reCAPTCHA, and GravityForms Zero Spam—the spam continues to get through. The spammer is persistent and is using different IP addresses for each submission, all from different cities in the US. They're also reusing the same name, phone number, email, and location address but making slight variations, which makes it hard to block them. I've activated the 'No Duplicates' feature for both email and project description, and even added it for the phone number recently. It seems pointless to block IPs since they keep changing. Does anyone have other suggestions? I've noticed that they're coming to the site through Google search ads, meaning my client is paying for this spam too!
3 Answers
You might want to try using OOPSpam. It’s been working really well for us against spam submissions. Definitely worth a shot!
I totally understand your frustration with Gravity Forms. I faced similar challenges and found that integrating reCAPTCHA really helped cut down submissions. Additionally, enabling the "Honeypot" feature in Gravity Forms adds a hidden field that most bots will fill in, allowing you to catch them. These combined approaches led to a significant drop in spam for me. Also, tracking your submissions can help spot patterns in spam and see when filters need adjusting. Definitely explore combining several tactics to see what works best for you!
Given what you’ve described, it seems like this spammer is targeting you manually, so standard anti-spam tools might not cut it. I suggest creating a custom plugin to block submissions based on specific keywords that the spammer uses. It’s pretty straightforward: just create a file called `form-submission-blocker.php` with a code snippet that checks the submitted data against an array of banned keywords. This way, if any form submission contains those keywords, it’ll be outright rejected. Just be careful what you include in that list!
Awesome! Thank you so much!
As I stated in the original post, I’ve got Akismet and reCaptcha installed already. I’m pretty sure this is not a bot issue.