Erik

gardenboi

<p>Are you unsatisfied with your current antispam solution for Contact Form 7? It might be using an ineffective method to combat the specific type of bot attacks you’re facing. Fortunately, I have a solution for you!<br />
Antispam for Contact Form 7 is a simple yet highly effective plugin that protects your mailbox from bot flooding. Say goodbye to tedious configurations and captchas, which often lead to reduced conversions and inconvenience for genuine users. Our plugin utilizes a combination of on-page and off-page bot traps, along with an auto-learning mechanism powered by a statistical “Bayesian” spam filter called B8.<br />
CF7-AntiSpam seamlessly integrates with <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/flamingo/" rel="ugc">Flamingo</a> and enhances its functionality. When both plugins are installed, Flamingo gains additional controls, and an extra dashboard widget is enabled.</p>
<h3>SETUP</h3>
<p>Basic – Install and go! No configuration, keys, or registrations are required to activate the antispam protection. In this case, some protections, such as fingerprinting, language checks, and honeypots, will be enabled.<br />
Advanced – For CF7A to properly analyze the email content using its dictionary, it needs to parse the input message field of your form. To notify the antispam to check this field, you’ll need to add a “marker” to each contact form on your website. Simply add ‘flamingo_message: “[your-message]”‘ in the additional settings panel of each contact form you want to secure. This process follows the same method used with Flamingo. While this step may seem tedious, it is required for advanced text statistical analysis. Without it, the B8 filter cannot be enabled.<br />
GeoIP – (Optional) If you need to restrict which countries or languages can email you, you can enable this functionality. To enable GeoIP, you’ll need to agree to the GeoLite2 End User License Agreement and sign up for GeoLite2 Downloadable Databases. This will provide you with the required key to download the database. For detailed instructions, please refer to the dedicated section in the cf7-antispam plugin settings.</p>
<h3>Antispam Available Tests</h3>
<p>✅ Browser Fingerprinting<br />
✅ Language checks (Geo-ip, http headers and browser)<br />
✅ Honeypot<br />
️🆕 Honeyform*<br />
✅ Domain Name System Blackhole List (aka DNSBL)<br />
✅ blocklists (with automatic ban after N failed attempts, user defined ip exclusion list)<br />
✅ Hidden fields with encrypted unique hash<br />
✅ Time elapsed (with min/max values)<br />
✅ Prohibited words in message/email and user agent<br />
✅ B8 statistical “Bayesian” spam filter<br />
✅ Identity protection<br />
✅ Webmail protection</p>
<h3>Extends Flamingo and turns it into a spam manager!</h3>
<p>With this plugin, you can now review emails and train B8 to identify spam and legitimate messages. This feature proves useful, especially during the initial stages when some spam emails may slip through.<br />
Already using Flamingo? Even better! Just remember to add ‘flamingo_message: “[your-message]”‘ to the advanced settings (similar to other Flamingo labels) before activating the plugin. Alternatively, you can explore the advanced options and select “rebuild dictionary.”<br />
Upon activating CF7A, all previously collected emails will be parsed, and B8 will learn and develop its vocabulary. This pre-trained algorithm gives you a head start. How cool is that?<br />
Additional Notes:<br />
– A new column has been added to the right side of the Flamingo inbound page, displaying the level of spaminess for each email.<br />
– If you unban an email on the Flamingo “inbound” page, the corresponding IP will be removed from the blocklist. However, marking an email as spam will not blocklist the IP again.<br />
– Before activating this plugin, please make sure to mark all spam emails as spam in the Flamingo inbound section. This auto-training process will help the B8 algorithm.<br />
– If you receive a spam message, please avoid deleting it from the “ham” section. Instead, place it in the spam section to teach B8 how to differentiate between spam and legitimate messages.</p>
<h3>B8 statistical “Bayesian” Filter</h3>
<p>Originally created by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Robinson" rel="nofollow ugc">Gary Robinson</a> <a href="https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6467" rel="nofollow ugc">b8 is a statistical “Bayesian”</a> spam filter implemented in PHP.<br />
The B8 filter is a foundational example of <strong>Machine Learning (ML)</strong> for text classification, representing an early, yet powerful, statistical approach in Natural Language Processing (NLP). This approach precedes feature-weighting methods like <strong>TF-IDF</strong>, which in turn paved the way for modern deep learning architectures, such as <strong>Transformers</strong> and <strong>GPT</strong>.<br />
The filter tells you whether a text is spam or not, using statistical text analysis. What it does is: you give b8 a text and it returns a value between 0 and 1, saying it’s ham when it’s near 0 and saying it’s spam when it’s near 1. See <a href="https://nasauber.de/opensource/b8/readme.html#how-does-it-work" rel="nofollow ugc">How does it work?</a> for details about this.<br />
To be able to distinguish spam and ham (non-spam), b8 first has to learn some spam and some ham texts. If it makes mistakes when classifying unknown texts or the result is not distinct enough, b8 can be told what the text actually is, getting better with each learned text.<br />
This takes place on your own server without relying on third-party services.<br />
More info: <a href="https://nasauber.de/opensource/b8/" rel="nofollow ugc">nasauber.de</a></p>
<h3>Identity protection</h3>
<p>To fully protect the forms, it may be necessary to enable a couple of additional controls, because bots use the public data of the website to spam on it.<br />
– The first is user related and denies those who are not logged in the possibility of asking (sensitive) information about the user via wp-api and the protection for the xmlrpc exploit wordpress.<br />
– The second one is the WordPress protection that will obfuscate sensitive WordPress and server data, adding some headers in order to enhance security against xss and so on.<br />
Will be hidden the WordPress and WooCommerce version (wp_generator, woo_version), pingback (X-Pingback), server (nginx|apache|…) and php version (X-Powered-By), enabled xss protection headers (X-XSS-Protection), removes rest api link from header (but it will only continue to work if the link is not made public).</p>
<h3>Mailbox Protection (Multiple Send)</h3>
<p>Enhance email security by enabling the “Multiple Send” feature, which prevents consecutive email submissions to the user’s mailbox. This measure is effective in thwarting automated spam attempts and ensures a secure communication environment.</p>
<h3>Security & Privacy: A Local-First Approach</h3>
<p>AntiSpam for Contact Form 7 is built with your security and privacy as the <strong>top priority</strong>. Unlike many modern anti-spam solutions that rely on external cloud services or third-party subscriptions, our plugin is designed to run <strong>entirely on your own WordPress installation</strong>.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>100% Local Processing:</strong> All anti-spam logic, checks, and data processing are performed directly on your server. <strong>No data is ever sent to, or stored by, any external third-party service</strong> (including ours).</li>
<li><strong>Not a Software as a Service (SaaS):</strong> This plugin is a standalone, self-contained software solution, not an interface to a paid or subscription-based external service. Once installed, it works autonomously.</li>
<li><strong>Enhanced Security:</strong> Since there is <strong>no central server or external API endpoint</strong> to communicate with, your website is immune to potential risks associated with centralized services, such as Single Point of Failure or data breach risks.</li>
</ul>
<p>You retain complete control and ownership over the security of your Contact Form 7 submissions.</p>
<h3>Privacy Notices</h3>
<p>AntiSpam for Contact Form 7 only processes the IP but doesn’t store any personal data directly from the user input. However, it creates a dictionary of spam and ham (non-spam) words in the WordPress database.<br />
This dictionary is built from words found in the submitted messages, meaning it <strong>may contain words that were part of the user’s e-mail message or personal data</strong>. This data is “degenerated,” which means the words might be normalized or altered before being stored.<br />
The sole purpose of this word collecting is to build a dictionary used for local, decentralized spam detection.</p>
<h3>Support</h3>
<p>Community support: via the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/contact-form-7-antispam/" rel="ugc">support forums</a> on wordpress.org<br />
Bug reporting (preferred): file an issue on <a href="https://github.com/erikyo/contact-form-7-antispam" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a></p>
<h4>Contribute</h4>
<p>We love your input! We want to make contributing to this project as easy and transparent as possible, whether it’s:</p>
<ul>
<li>Reporting a bug</li>
<li>Testing the plugin with different user agent and report fingerprinting failures</li>
<li>Discussing the current state, features, improvements</li>
<li>Submitting a fix or a new feature</li>
</ul>
<p>We use GitHub to host code, to track issues and feature requests, as well as accept pull requests.<br />
By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under its GPLv2 License.</p>
<p>My goal is to create an antispam that protects cf7 definitively without relying on external services. And free for everyone.<br />
if you want to help me, <a href="https://github.com/erikyo/contact-form-7-antispam" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a> is the right place 😉</p>
<h3>copyright</h3>
<p>AntiSpam for Contact Form 7, Copyright 2021 Codekraft Studio<br />
AntiSpam for Contact Form 7 is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL</p>
<p>This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify<br />
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by<br />
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or<br />
(at your option) any later version.</p>
<p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,<br />
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of<br />
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.<br />
See the LICENSE file for more details.</p>
<h4>Resources</h4>
<ul>
<li>Contact Form 7 and Flamingo © 2021 Takayuki Miyoshi,<a href="https://it.wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/" rel="nofollow ugc">LGPLv3 or later</a></li>
<li>B8 https://nasauber.de/opensource/b8/, © 2021 Tobias Leupold, <a href="https://gitlab.com/l3u/b8/-/tree/ab26daa6b293e6aa059d24ce7cf77af6c8b9b052/LICENSES" rel="nofollow ugc">LGPLv3 or later</a></li>
<li>GeoLite2 <a href="https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/eula" rel="nofollow ugc">license</a></li>
<li>GeoIP2 PHP API <a href="https://github.com/maxmind/GeoIP2-php" rel="nofollow ugc">GeoIP2-php</a></li>
<li>chart.js https://www.chartjs.org/, © 2021 Chart.js <a href="https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js/graphs/contributors" rel="nofollow ugc">contributors</a>, <a href="https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js/blob/master/LICENSE.md" rel="nofollow ugc">MIT</a></li>
<li>Sudden Shower in the Summer, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sudden_Shower_in_the_Summer_(5759500422).jpg</li>
</ul>
<h3>Contibutions</h3>
<p>Mirek Długosz – <a href="https://github.com/erikyo/cf7-antispam/pull/30" rel="nofollow ugc">#30</a> fixes a crash that occurred when analysing flamingo metadata<br />
MeliEve – <a href="https://github.com/wp-blocks/cf7-antispam/pull/42" rel="nofollow ugc">#42</a> Fix “internal_server_error” when message is empty<br />
MeliEve – <a href="https://github.com/wp-blocks/cf7-antispam/pull/61" rel="nofollow ugc">#61</a>  Handle deferrer script loading<br />
Zodiac1978 – <a href="https://github.com/wp-blocks/cf7-antispam/pull/67" rel="nofollow ugc">#67</a> Remove warning for unsafe email configuration w/o protection<br />
JohnHooks – <a href="https://github.com/wp-blocks/cf7-antispam/pull/61" rel="nofollow ugc">#66</a> Readme + plugin env<br />
sdellenb – <a href="https://github.com/wp-blocks/cf7-antispam/pull/163" rel="nofollow ugc">#66</a> Fix $reason parameter for calling cf7a_ban_by_ip</p>
<h3>Special thanks</h3>
<p>This project is tested with BrowserStack. <a href="https://www.browserstack.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Browserstack</a></p>
<h3>MaxMind GeoIP2</h3>
<p>This plugin on demand can enable GeoLite2 created by MaxMind, available from <a href="https://www.maxmind.com" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.maxmind.com</a><br />
While enabled you may <strong>have to mention it in the privacy policy</strong> of your site, depending on the law regulating privacy in your state!<br />
* GeoIP2 databases <a href="https://www.maxmind.com/en/accounts/current/geoip/downloads" rel="nofollow ugc">GeoLite2 Country</a></p>
<h3>DNSBL servers privacy policies</h3>
<ul>
<li>dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net <a href="http://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=13&s=0" rel="nofollow ugc">www.uceprotect.net license</a></li>
<li>dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net <a href="http://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=13&s=0" rel="nofollow ugc">www.uceprotect.net license</a></li>
<li>dnsbl-3.uceprotect.net <a href="http://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=13&s=0" rel="nofollow ugc">www.uceprotect.net license</a></li>
<li>dnsbl.sorbs.net <a href="http://www.sorbs.net/information/faq/" rel="nofollow ugc">sorbs.net license</a></li>
<li>zen.spamhaus.org <a href="https://www.spamhaus.org/organization/dnsblusage/" rel="nofollow ugc">spamhaus.org license</a></li>
<li>bl.spamcop.net <a href="https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/297.html" rel="nofollow ugc">spamcop.net license</a></li>
<li>b.barracudacentral.org <a href="https://www.barracuda.com/company/legal/trust-center/data-privacy/privacy-policy" rel="nofollow ugc">barracudacentral.org privacy-policy</a></li>
<li>dnsbl.dronebl.org <a href="https://dronebl.org/docs/faq" rel="nofollow ugc">dronebl.org</a></li>
<li>all.spamrats.com <a href="https://spamrats.com/tos.php" rel="nofollow ugc">spamrats.com tos</a></li>
<li>bl.ipv6.spameatingmonkey.net <a href="https://spameatingmonkey.com/faq" rel="nofollow ugc">spameatingmonkey.net</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Inspirations, links</h3>
<ul>
<li>Nikolai Tschacher <a href="https://incolumitas.com/pages/BotOrNot/" rel="nofollow ugc">incolumitas.com</a></li>
<li>Antoine Vastel <a href="https://github.com/antoinevastel/fpscanner" rel="nofollow ugc">fp-scanner</a>/<a href="https://github.com/antoinevastel/fp-collect" rel="nofollow ugc">fp-collect</a></li>
<li>Niespodd <a href="https://github.com/niespodd/browser-fingerprinting" rel="nofollow ugc">niespodd</a></li>
<li>Thomas Breuss <a href="https://gist.github.com/tbreuss/74da96ff5f976ce770e6628badbd7dfc" rel="nofollow ugc">tbreuss</a></li>
<li>Domain Name System-based blackhole list <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System-based_blackhole_list" rel="nofollow ugc">wiki</a></li>
<li>dnsbl list <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_DNS_blacklists" rel="nofollow ugc">wiki</a></li>
</ul>


AntiSpam for Contact Form 7

A trustworthy antispam plugin for Contact Form 7. Wave goodbye to spam and keep your inbox clean!

WP Engine

Steven Word

Taylor McCaslin

ryanshoover

markkelnar

Nate Gay

stephenlin

<p>WP Engine GeoTarget integrates with the variables on your WP Engine site to display content catered to the visitor’s location. With the ability to access variables from as broad as country to as specific as latitude and longitude, your website can now display geographically relevant content.</p>
<h4>Geo-Marketing</h4>
<ul>
<li>Create marketing campaigns targeted only at certain locations.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Localization</h4>
<ul>
<li>Redirect incoming traffic to content in the local language or currency.</li>
<li>Businesses with local branches can direct customers to a relevant physical location or local microsite.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Ecommerce</h4>
<ul>
<li>Filter out merchandise or services that are not available in a certain locale.</li>
<li>Display country-specific shipping, tax, or sales information.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Legal Requirements</h4>
<ul>
<li>Filter required legal notices from countries for whom those notices may not be relevant.</li>
</ul>
<h4>* Please Note *</h4>
<p>Customers on Premium and Enterprise plans can use this plugin at no additional cost. If you are on another plan type and would like to use GeoTarget on one of your sites, you can add it to your plan <a href="http://wpengine.com/plans/?utm_source=wpengine-geoip" rel="nofollow ugc">here</a>. This will not function outside of the WP Engine environment.</p>
<h3>Location Variable Shortcodes</h3>
<p>You can use any of the following location variable shortcodes to return the various geographic location the user is visiting your site from:</p>
<p>1) Continent: <code>[geoip-continent]</code></p>
<p>2) Country: <code>[geoip-country]</code></p>
<p>3) Region: <code>[geoip-region]</code></p>
<ul>
<li>In the US region will return States</li>
<li>In Canada region will return Provinces</li>
<li>Outside the US/CA this will return a Region number. Please note region numbers are not unique between countries</li>
</ul>
<p>4) City: <code>[geoip-city]</code></p>
<p>5) Postal Code: <code>[geoip-postalcode]</code></p>
<ul>
<li>This variable is only available in the US due to limitations with the location data GeoTarget uses</li>
</ul>
<p>6) Latitude: <code>[geoip-latitude]</code></p>
<p>7) Longitude: <code>[geoip-longitude]</code></p>
<p>8) Location: <code>[geoip-location]</code></p>
<h4>Example</h4>
<pre><code>Hi, and welcome to [geoip-city]! The place to be in [geoip-region],[geoip-country].
</code></pre>
<p>A visitor from Austin, Texas would see the following:<br />
    Hi, and welcome to Austin! The place to be in TX, US.</p>
<h3>Localized Content</h3>
<pre><code>[geoip-content country="US"]Your US specific content goes here[/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<p>The content shortcode allows you to hide or show specific content based on visitor geographies:</p>
<p>Below are all the supported geography options, this allows to you SHOW content for only specific locations:</p>
<ul>
<li>continent</li>
<li>country</li>
<li>areacode</li>
<li>region</li>
<li>city</li>
<li>postalcode</li>
</ul>
<p>Below are all the supported negative geography options, this allows to you HIDE content for only specific locations:</p>
<ul>
<li>not_continent</li>
<li>not_country</li>
<li>not_areacode</li>
<li>not_region</li>
<li>not_city</li>
<li>not_postalcode</li>
</ul>
<h4>Examples of the Content Shortcode</h4>
<p>This will display “Content just for US visitors” strictly for visitors viewing from the United States.</p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content country="US"] Content just for US visitors [/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<p>This will display “Content just for everyone in Texas and California” strictly for visitors from Texas and California.</p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content region="TX, CA."] Content just for everyone in Texas and California [/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<p>You can mix and match geography and negative geography options to create verbose logic in a single shortcode:</p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content country="US" not_city="Austin"]Content for US visitors but not for visitors in Austin[/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<h4>Limitations</h4>
<p>There is a single limitation in the logic that lets you filter content for multiple geographic areas.</p>
<p>You can progressively limit the area that content is shown in. But once your content is hidden from an area, a subset of that area can’t be added back in.</p>
<p>For example,<br />
If I limit my content to Europe, then limit my content from Great Britain, I can’t go back and show it to London.</p>
<h4>Creative Work Arounds</h4>
<h3>Limit content to some regions of a country (or some cities of a state)</h3>
<p>You want to show an offer for free shipping to every state in the US <em>but</em> Alaska and Hawaii. You may be inclined to write something like</p>
<p><strong>BAD</strong></p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content country="US" not_state="AK, HI"]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet[/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<p>Instead, show it to all other 48 states</p>
<p><strong>GOOD</strong></p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content state="AL, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, WY"]Free shipping on all orders over $50![/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<h3>Duplicate location names</h3>
<p>You want to show discount airfare on a flight to Paris, France. The content should show to all of the US and France, but not Paris itself.</p>
<p><strong>BAD</strong></p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content country="US, FR" not_city="Paris"]Fly to Paris for only $199![/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<p>The problem here is that Paris, Texas will be hidden. The solution? Just have two geoip-content shortcodes.</p>
<p><strong>GOOD</strong></p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content country="FR" not_city="Paris"]Fly to Paris for only $199![/geoip-content][geoip-content country="US"]Fly to Paris for only $199![/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<h3>Adding an area into an omitted region</h3>
<p>You want to show an ad written in Spanish to all of South America except for Brazil. Brasilia, however, has enough Spanish speakers that you want to include Brasilia.</p>
<p><strong>BAD</strong></p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content continent="SA" not_country="BR" city="Brasilia"]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet[/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<p><strong>GOOD</strong></p>
<pre><code>[geoip-content continent="SA" not_country="BR"]Venta de la Navidad en los adaptadores USB[/geoip-content]



[geoip-content city="Brasilia"]Venta de la Navidad en los adaptadores USB[/geoip-content]
</code></pre>
<h3>Calculate distance between points</h3>
<p>You have a utility function that will calculate the distance from your provided lat/lng coordinate to the visitor’s location in either miles or kilometers. This can be useful for determining approximate distances, as results may be cached at the state or country level, depending on your configuration.</p>
<p>Example use:</p>
<pre><code>$latitude  = 30.268246;
$longitude = -97.745992;
$geo = WPEngine\GeoIp::instance();
if ( false !== $geo->distance_to( $latitude, $longitude ) ) {
    $miles_to_wp_engine = $geo->distance_to( $latitude, $longitude );
}
</code></pre>
<h3>Testing Parameters</h3>
<p>You can use the following URL parameters to test how your localized content will appear to visitors from various geographic locations. You can add any of the parameters below to any URL of a page using the GeoTarget shortcodes or API calls:</p>
<p>Spoof visitor from the state of Texas:</p>
<pre><code>yourdomain.com/?geoip&region=TX
</code></pre>
<p>Spoof visitor from the United States:</p>
<pre><code>yourdomain.com/?geoip&country=US
</code></pre>
<p>Spoof visitor from Austin, Texas</p>
<pre><code>yourdomain.com/?geoip&city=Austin
</code></pre>
<p>Spoof visitor from the U.S. zip code 78701:</p>
<pre><code>yourdomain.com/?geoip&zip=78701
</code></pre>
<p>Please note: full page redirects and TLD redirects still need to be implemented with the necessary API calls.</p>


WP Engine GeoTarget

After having spent few hours trying to work the plugin's WPEngine\GeoIp::distance_to() method I found that the code has logical bug which caused the return of wrong values.

For a product WP Engine is charging $30 / month this is not acceptable. I contacted the WP Engine support, but they said they do not offer development support, hmmm, okay!

Plugin does not work as expected

Create a personalized user experience based on location.

AntiSpam for Contact Form 7 vs WP Engine GeoTarget