Do you want to stop Contact Form 7 spam on WordPress? Are there too many spam mails from your CF7 integrated contact form?
Unfortunately email spamming is a very used and terribly annoying practice for those who suffer it, so it is good to prevent and block all forms of spam coming from your site.
If you have installed the Contact Form 7 plugin on your WordPress blog to allow your users to send you emails and contact you, then it is very likely that you will also receive spam emails.
In this article, I provide you with a series of useful tips to immediately stop spam coming from Contact Form 7 and block all forms of malicious mail from your WordPress blog.
How to Stop Contact Form 7 Spam on WordPress
As discussed whether you have the great plugin Contact Form 7 to allow your readers to send you email and contact you then it is very likely that you’re also receiving email type spam.
Do not you believe it?
Then log into your email account and check if in the ” spam ” folder there are any emails from your CF7 contact form, it is highly likely that this is the case if you have not taken any kind of precaution and adequately protected your form.
Every Blogger should apply best practices to secure their blog and among these there is also the need to avoid spam.
Let’s see together some simple precautions to take to secure CF7 and immediately stop generating spam mails.
Google reCAPTCHA v3
Contact Form has a feature that allows you to integrate Google reCAPTCHA v3 with CF7, in this way your form will be well protected and you will stop generating spam mails.
To integrate Google reCAPTCHA v3 with CF7 proceed as follows :
- Access thewebsiteof Google reCAPTCHA
- Create a new access key V3
- Copy the access key and secret access key you just created
- Go back to the WordPress administrative panel
- Access the ” Contact ” – ” Integration ” section
- Click on ” Set Integration “
- Copy the newly generated keys
In this way, you will have integrated Contact Form 7 with Google reCAPTCHA v3 and you will immediately begin to see the benefits, with a drastic reduction in spam mails.
The only negative side of this solution is the heaviness in terms of KB of the scripts.
I did some technical checks and I noticed that this integration significantly lowers the rank of the pages in terms of Google Page Speed, so I looked for other solutions that are equally effective but leaner and lighter.
AKISMET
Akismet is a great plugin that allows you to secure the comment form and avoid hateful spam under your articles. My advice, regardless of Contact Form 7, is to activate it and integrate it into your WordPress blog.
Once installed and activated, you can exploit its potential to protect yourself from email spam and not just from comments.
To integrate Akismet with CF7 proceed as follows :
- Access the contact form in edit
- Select the ” Module ” tab
- Edit the text boxes (text and email) by adding the attribute “akismet: ….”
This for the Name text box :
[text * your-name akismet: author ]
and this for the email text box :
[email * your-email akismet: author_email ]
In this way you will have integrated and protected your contact form with the potential of Akismet to avoid sending spam.
If you want to be even more relaxed then I recommend that you also apply this last advice, that is to integrate a quiz to avoid the activities of bots.
Integrated QUIZ
By integrating a quiz into your CF7 form you will avoid all those emails sent by various bots and robots that automatically send spam messages.
To integrate a Quiz with CF7 proceed as follows :
- Access the contact form in edit
- Select the ” Module ” tab
- Before the “Send” button enter the following code
<p> Let me understand that you are <b> not a robot </b>! <br /> [quiz quiz-thinking "How much is 2x3? | 6"]
In this way, to proceed with sending the email, the user will be forced to enter the correct answer in the form, under penalty of failure to send.
As you will understand, it is quite complex for a bot to provide the answers, especially if they are complex and multiple.
You can create a multiple quiz with this syntax
[quiz quiz-thinking "The capital of Japan? | Tokyo" "to the capital of France? | Paris" "The capital of Spain? | Madrid"]
In this way it will be even more complex for the bot to circumvent your countermeasures and you will have secured your e-mail form.
Conclusions
In this article we have seen together how to secure the mailing form of your WordPress blog.
Avoiding spam is a best practice that every blogger should apply to reduce or better eliminate the sending of fraudulent and dangerous emails.
In this article I showed you how I made this blog safe, thanks to the Google reCAPTCHA, Akismet and Quiz integrations integrated with the Contact Form 7 plugin.