Contact Form Upgrade - CAPTCHA

Well, it's been a very brain twanging, head banging couple of days trying to add further security to the contact forms on the site. Not only for our own contacts but the contact details of our clients who list their properties or services.

Well it's done.

Our initial form sending relied on 'hidden' .php scripts to contain the contact details and hide them from the prying eyes of automated email sending applications, spambots.

This seemed to me to be pretty secure until I received my first 'sniff' email from an automated system known as Abe Torkelton. A quick search of the name Abe Torkelton told me that it's a system designed to complete and submit forms and await a reply. Once it receives a reply it tags that contact form as a valid form to send further emails (probably spam advertising).

Anyone receiving and email from Abe Torkelton should delete it without replying. To date there have been no contacts to any of our listings, just the one to our main contact form.

Soooooooooo fighting frantically to reach the point I had added a system which requires a randomly generated code to be entered before the form is sent to the contactee. If the code is not entered or is entered incorrectly the message is not sent. As it is randomly generated (click refresh on the contact us page to see) automated systems can't read the code which is displayed as an image rather than actual numbers and therefore can't submit the form.

I'm sure there are some very clever people out there who are doing their best to try and beat these systems and keep up the awful practice of spamming websites and email addresses but this upgrade goes a long way in fighting them.

Maybe the spamming geeks will all get bored and get girlfriends soon.

Regards.