Riccardo Rosignoli

🛡️ DigitaleZen AntiSpam Shield for CF7 is a lightweight yet powerful plugin that protects Contact Form 7 forms from spam, bots, and suspicious submissions.
It combines a multi-layered defense system, including:
<ul>
<li>Invisible honeypot field</li>
<li>Hourly-expiring SHA256 token</li>
<li>Automatic flood protection</li>
<li>Temporary IP firewall</li>
<li>Real-time blacklist updates every 24h (StopForumSpam, Spamhaus, SpamCop)</li>
<li>Advanced CSV logging</li>
<li>Interactive dashboard with chart and bot log</li>
<li>Weekly report via email (configurable)</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
✅ No complex setup. No CAPTCHA. No data collection. 
 Works out-of-the-box.
</blockquote>
<h3>Features</h3>
<ul>
<li>🔐 Invisible honeypot protection </li>
<li>⏱️ Minimum send time (4 seconds) </li>
<li>🔑 SHA256 token valid for 2 hours </li>
<li>🧱 Soft IP firewall (10-minute ban) </li>
<li>📩 Dynamic blacklist: IPs, emails, domains, keywords, usernames </li>
<li>💥 Flood protection: 3 submissions = auto ban </li>
<li>🧾 Detailed logging (date, IP, email, reason, trigger) </li>
<li>📈 Interactive chart of blocked spam by type and timeframe </li>
<li>📬 Weekly email reports </li>
<li>🧘 Clean and minimalist DigitaleZen-style UI </li>
<li>🔒 Admin-only dashboard access</li>
</ul>
<h3>External services</h3>
This plugin periodically downloads an updated anti-spam blacklist from a service operated by DigitaleZen and hosted on Google Apps Script (domain: script.google.com).
• Purpose: fetch a JSON list of abusive/disposable emails and domains used by the plugin’s firewall checks. 
• When data is sent: once per day via WP-Cron (and when an admin triggers a manual update). 
• What data is sent: no form submissions and no user personal data are sent. The request is server-to-server (HTTP GET) and only standard headers (e.g., User-Agent) are included. 
• Storage: the downloaded JSON is stored locally within your WordPress site (e.g. under wp-content/uploads in a plugin-specific folder).
Provider policies (service owner): DigitaleZen — https://digitalezen.it/terms/ • https://digitalezen.it/privacy-policy/ 
Hosting platform policies (infrastructure): Google — https://policies.google.com/terms • https://policies.google.com/privacy

DigitaleZen AntiSpam Shield for CF7

The ultimate shield for Contact Form 7. Blocks spam with honeypots, tokens and a live blacklist—no CAPTCHA.

Jeff Starr

<blockquote>
✨ Trap bad bots in a virtual black hole
</blockquote>
Important: Do NOT use this plugin on sites with caching. <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/topic/important-do-not-use-on-sites-with-caching/" rel="ugc">Learn more »</a>
👾 Bye bye bad bots..
Bad bots are the worst. They do all sorts of nasty stuff and waste server resources. The Blackhole plugin helps to stop bad bots and save precious resources for legit visitors.
👾 How does it work?
First the plugin adds a hidden trigger link to the footer of your pages. You then add a line to your robots.txt file that forbids all bots from following the hidden link. Bots that then ignore or disobey your robots rules will crawl the link and fall into the trap. Once trapped, bad bots are denied further access to your WordPress site.
I call it the “one-strike” rule: bots have one chance to obey your site’s robots.txt rule. Failure to comply results in immediate banishment. The best part is that the Blackhole only affects bad bots: human users never see the hidden link, and good bots obey the robots rules in the first place. Win-win! 🙂
<blockquote>
✨ Add a blackhole trap to help stop bad bots
</blockquote>
Important: Do NOT use this plugin on sites with caching. <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/topic/important-do-not-use-on-sites-with-caching/" rel="ugc">Learn more »</a>
👾 Features
<ul>
<li>Easy to set up</li>
<li>Squeaky clean code</li>
<li>Focused and modular</li>
<li>Lightweight, fast and flexible</li>
<li>Built with the WordPress API</li>
<li>Works with other security plugins</li>
<li>Easy to reset the list of bad bots</li>
<li>Easy to delete any bot from the list</li>
<li>Regularly updated and “future proof”</li>
<li>Blackhole link includes “nofollow” attribute</li>
<li>Plugin options configurable via settings screen</li>
<li>Works silently behind the scenes to protect your site</li>
<li>Whitelists all major search engines to never block</li>
<li>Focused on flexibility, performance, and security</li>
<li>Email alerts with WHOIS lookup for blocked bots</li>
<li>Complete inline documentation via the Help tab</li>
<li>Provides setting to whitelist any IP addresses</li>
<li>Customize the message displayed to bad bots 😉</li>
<li>One-click restore the plugin default options</li>
<li>Does NOT use or require any .htaccess rules</li>
</ul>
Blackhole for Bad Bots protects your site against bad bots, spammers, scrapers, scanners, and other automated threats.
<blockquote>
✨ Not using WordPress? Check out the <a href="https://perishablepress.com/blackhole-bad-bots/" rel="nofollow ugc">standalone PHP version of Blackhole</a>!
</blockquote>
👾 Whitelist
By default, this plugin does NOT block any of the major search engines (user agents):
<ul>
<li>AOL.com</li>
<li>Baidu</li>
<li>Bingbot/MSN</li>
<li>DuckDuckGo</li>
<li>Googlebot</li>
<li>Teoma</li>
<li>Yahoo!</li>
<li>Yandex</li>
</ul>
These search engines (and all of their myriad variations) are whitelisted via user agent. So are a bunch of other “useful” bots. They always are allowed full access to your site, even if they disobey your robots.txt rules. This list can be customized in the plugin settings. For a complete list of whitelisted bots, visit the Help tab in the plugin settings (under “Whitelist Settings”).
<blockquote>
✨ Check out <a href="https://plugin-planet.com/blackhole-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Blackhole Pro</a> and level up with advanced features!
</blockquote>
👾 Exclusive Pro Features
<ul>
<li>Option to disable for logged-in users</li>
<li>Threshold control (number of allowed hits)</li>
<li>Custom email alerts</li>
<li>Custom messages for blocked bots</li>
<li>Custom redirect for blocked bots</li>
<li>Custom blackhole trigger links</li>
<li>Complete inline documentation</li>
<li>Block bots based on user agent</li>
<li>Block bots based on IP address</li>
<li>Whitelist/allow bots by user agent</li>
<li>Whitelist/allow bots by IP address</li>
<li>Redirect whitelisted bots</li>
<li>Set custom HTTP Status Code</li>
<li>Full-featured Bad Bot Log with paging, sorting, and field search</li>
<li>Manually add bad bots to the Bad Bot Log</li>
<li>Geo/IP location lookups for each bad bot</li>
<li>Logs number of blocked hits for each bot</li>
</ul>
..plus everything the free version can do and more.
<blockquote>
✨ Learn more and <a href="https://plugin-planet.com/blackhole-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">get Blackhole Pro »</a>
</blockquote>
👾 Privacy
User Data: This plugin automatically blocks bad bots. When bad bots fall into the trap, their IP address, user agent, and other request data are stored in the WP database. No other user data is collected by this plugin. At any time, the administrator may delete all saved data via the plugin settings.
Services: This plugin does not connect to any third-party locations or services.
Cookies: This plugin does not set any cookies.
Credit: Header Image Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Blackhole for Bad Bots is developed and maintained by <a href="https://x.com/perishable" rel="nofollow ugc">Jeff Starr</a>, 15-year <a href="https://plugin-planet.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress developer</a> and <a href="https://books.perishablepress.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">book author</a>.
👾 Support development
I develop and maintain this free plugin with love for the WordPress community. To show support, you can <a href="https://monzillamedia.com/donate.html" rel="nofollow ugc">make a donation</a> or purchase one of my books:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wp-tao.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">The Tao of WordPress</a></li>
<li><a href="https://digwp.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Digging into WordPress</a></li>
<li><a href="https://htaccessbook.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">.htaccess made easy</a></li>
<li><a href="https://wp-tao.com/wordpress-themes-book/" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress Themes In Depth</a></li>
<li><a href="https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/wizards-collection-sql-recipes-wordpress/" rel="nofollow ugc">Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress</a></li>
</ul>
And/or purchase one of my premium WordPress plugins:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/bbq-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">BBQ Pro</a> – Blazing fast WordPress firewall</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/blackhole-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Blackhole Pro</a> – Automatically block bad bots</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/banhammer-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Banhammer Pro</a> – Monitor traffic and ban the bad guys</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/ga-google-analytics-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">GA Google Analytics Pro</a> – Connect WordPress to Google Analytics</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/head-meta-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Head Meta Pro</a> – Ultimate Meta Tags for WordPress</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/simple-ajax-chat-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Simple Ajax Chat Pro</a> – Unlimited chat rooms</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/usp-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">USP Pro</a> – Unlimited front-end forms</li>
</ul>
Links, tweets and likes also appreciated. Thank you! 🙂

Blackhole for Bad Bots

Отличный инструмент

Simple. I install this every time I spin up a new WordPress site.

Simple

Blackhole is a WordPress security plugin that detects and traps bad bots in a virtual black hole, where they are denied access to your entire site.

DigitaleZen AntiSpam Shield for CF7 vs Blackhole for Bad Bots