Suddenly spam

[Andy Perdue]

We’ve been running Community Events and The Events Calendar Pro for 18 months – and love it.

Today, for the first time, we began seeing a flood of spam showing up through calendar submissions.

We allow anonymous submissions, though all have to be approved. We’re loathe to turn this off because it wasn’t a problem until today.

Is this my only solution, or are there ideas on what else we might try first?

[Casey D]

Hello andyperdue,

Sorry for the delay, we were cooking up a solution for you.

Previously, we didn’t have a very good response and it was something akin to “don’t allow anonymous submissions” or “don’t make it public facing”, which isn’t a very good answer.

We worked up a plugin that uses the Really Simple Captcha plugin to quickly add a captcha to your form. It isn’t the most robust solution, but I believe you’ll find it to be very effective.

We are working through the final process on this small extension. It should be safe to use, but just so you’re aware it is still unofficially supported at this point, you may want to read through it and install on a trial site first to make sure it works for you.

https://github.com/caseypatrickdriscoll/patched_up_community_events_captcha

I’ll report back when it is officially approved to launch.

Does this make sense? Let me know if this doesn’t work for you.

Cheers!

– Casey Driscoll

[yvrmark]

We are experiencing exactly the same thing. Having used Community Events for months we are seeing a flood of spam submissions. A solution cannot come soon enough.

[Andy Perdue]

Thanks, Casey. I look forward to the official launch. I appreciate your dilligence.

[lara]

Glad to see I am not the only one! This is driving me nuts!

[mdreher]

We also have the same problem as well. Right now all of the spam is using one particular email address, but I’m sure that will change soon enough. My situation is the same as Andy’s. For me, it’s a matter of having to wade through a bunch of junk to get to the legitimate submissions.

[Casey D]

Hello everyone,

The two plugins listed above are ready for use. These aren’t official plugins, but should be a suitable workarounds until another solution is developed.

Install and activate both of these plugins and you will see a captcha on your Community Events form

https://github.com/caseypatrickdriscoll/patched_up_community_events_captcha
Really Simple Captcha

Let me know if you have any other questions!

If you have a moment, we’d love for you to submit any other spam prevention idea to our UserVoice forum. We take user ideas and contributions very seriously, and many times their ideas end up in our future releases.

Cheers!

– Casey Driscoll

[Nathan Baldwin]

Thank you for posting, I too just started experiencing this, not sure why they would be targeting this URL/String.

The patch works for now.

[yvrmark]

Hi, sorry for being a little dense but… I already have Really Simple Captcha installed but I have no idea where to actually find and install the second plugin that you refer to. When I click the github link it takes me to a .php file. Where is the actual “plug-in”? I’m obviously missing something.

[ziggil7682]

Hi,
I have used Pro and Community for over 2 years and the last 3 weeks are the first that I’ve had a very steady spam flow on the community form. I have installed and activated the two suggested plugins but no Captcha appears on the form. Any ideas?

[ziggil7682]

Hi, here’s something that worked for me. I noticed that spam bot was not filling out all of the fields on the event entry form, especially custom checkbox fields. I made important fields “Required” but also made 2 custom checkbox fields “Required”. 26 hours now without any spam submissions.

Here’s how- Follow directions on this page: https://theeventscalendar.com/the-events-calendarproadd-ons-3-7-things-to-be-aware-of/?utm_source=helptab&utm_medium=plugin-tec&utm_campaign=in-app
Be careful and don’t make fields like Upload Image required since some people may not have an image.

[Casey]

Thanks for everyone’s help here!

andyperdue,
I just wanted to follow up and see if you’re all set here or if you still have further questions. Just let me know if you have further questions or if I should go ahead and close out this thread. Thanks! 🙂

-Casey-

[Andy Perdue]

Casey,

For some reason, I can’t get the log-in to turn off, even though it is correctly checked in the backend. Any ideas?

[Casey]

Andy,
Were you able to resolve this? I’m not seeing the login when I view your submission page (screenshot).

[Casey]

Since I haven’t heard back from you here, I’m going to go ahead and close out this thread. Feel free to start a new thread if you have further issues. Thanks! 🙂

-Casey-

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