Community Event Spam Attack/Recaptcha

[rickwilkerson]

I am having a huge spam problem with community events. More than 4,000 spam entries in the past few weeks. I can’t figure out a way to bulk remove them. Is there one? Some of them auto posted but I switched the default to “pending” and now I have a ton of them to wade through and trash.

I tried to add recaptcha and it seems to be there, but it’s showing below the submit button. I tested submitting an event without using recaptcha and it doesn’t require it. So i don’t see how this will prevent more spam.

Please let me know what I need to do.

http://www.discoverirvington.com/events/community/add

Thanks.

[Cliff]

Hi Rick. Sorry to hear you’re having this issue.

Obviously, the point of Recaptcha is to cut down on spam entries so you want to make sure it’s implemented properly.

I visited your link and saw you have 2 Recaptchas there — http://cl.ly/1u2W1H3G2Q0p — and you have a console error — http://cl.ly/0C0e0F3c2g1R — neither of which is default behavior.

Please follow our Testing for Conflicts Guide and see if that helps narrow down the cause of this.

Let us know if you get the Recaptcha to work (disallow submitting the event unless successfully completing the Recaptcha) via our Testing for Conflicts Guide.

Thanks.

[rickwilkerson]

Thanks for your reply. I am going to try the conflict resolution but haven’t had time yet.

The bigger problem is that have thousands of spam events clogging up the calendar. I’ve had to shut it down altogether. I am not expert at database work so I don’t know how to get rid of these spam events in a bulk manner–doing so in the admin area would take many hours, even days.

Would appreciate some advice. Thank you.

[rickwilkerson]

OK, I deleted all the spam.

Now I’ve followed the conflict protocol and with 2015 theme, only Events Calendar plugins (freshly updated) and the extraneous Google Captcha removed, the supposed default recaptcha does not appear. Never has. That’s why I added the Google one.

So I’m still in need of help here.

Please let me know what you think is going on.

Thanks.

[Cliff]

Thanks for your patience during the time we were closed.

I’m glad you got all the spam events deleted. I’m sure that was a pain.

I tested this issue and was able to replicate it. I’ll mark this ticket as Pending Fix, which means this thread should receive a reply once the applicable fix has been released. I apologize for this issue and appreciate your understanding and patience.

[rickwilkerson]

Thanks. Can you give me an ETA? Community Events is out of business for me unless/until we can protect the submissions.

Rick

[Cliff]

Hi Rick. I’m not authorized to give ETAs, but it’s scheduled to be included in a near-term release. Thanks for your patience.

[Cliff]

Hi Rick. In our testing in planning to develop any needed fixes, it was discovered to be working properly. I previously missed the fact that the reCAPTCHA only displays for anonymous form submissions. If a user is logged in, it will not display.

Could you please make sure all your Modern Tribe plugins (and WordPress core) are at their latest versions?

• Downloads / Version Numbers
• TEC Automatic Updates
• or TEC Manual Updates
• WordPress core updates

Once you verify you’re on the latest versions, please test to see if the issue is still happening for you.

Thanks!

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

[Author]

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