Newsletter and Email Spam issue Magento 1

Question

I hope I can get a solution for this ongoing (and getting worse) issue very quick. I have been noticing a huge amount of spam emails to my website domain email address ([email protected]). Mostly adult content along with a lot of other spam emails. Our email address is nowhere on our site. We have also been getting a very large amount of newsletter subscribers daily.

Problem is I did not connect how our email address was getting so much spam till, I realized when they sign up they get a confirmation email and noticed (after subscribing with my own personal email) they can now see our email address. I even set the newsletter to confirmation and still they get an email with our email address.

Now to fix this issue I need to get something done. I tried the CAPTCHA and for some reason does not work for newsletter and contact us form. Plus I am trying to avoid customers taking extra steps having to check off a box (i'm not a robot) or adding text. Plus when I set the newsletter to confirm I notice legit customers are not responding to the email confirmation and therefore subscribing. I want legit subscribers so I need to have less steps for them to sign up. I have read where others suggested, CAPTCHA, Honeypot (or Honeybot) and HoneySpam. I need a reel fix asap that works. I will also say I need it to work on our Contact Us forms as well, as I get all kinds of emails through contact us for Funding, SEO Offers, Website Updates, etc.

Sorry for the long post, I need to get this fixed, and what works for my M1 site, I will need the same soon for our new M2 site we are launching in January. Thanks

Answer 1

I would suggest using Invisible captcha from Google in your website.

There are many paid modules which provide such functionality. Below are a few:

• https://amasty.com/magento-google-invisible-captcha.html
• https://meetanshi.com/magento-google-invisible-recaptcha.html

If you are a developer and can customize the code, you can try https://magecomp.com/magento-google-recaptcha.html and change visible captcha to invisible captcha.

Note: You would need to generate API keys (Site Key and Secret Key) for Google Captcha from Google API console.

Answer 2

The amasty extension suggested by @mohit is exactly what you need.

Not only will it work for default Magento forms but they have a setting in the admin where you can easily set other forms to also require Google invisible recaptcha

Answer 3

I was looking at the Amasty Extension and https://magecomp.com/magento-google-recaptcha.html. The one from Magecomp is free and has great reviews. Looks like it will do newsletter as well with Invisible recaptcha. I was leaning towards the one from Magecomp unless there is something different than I am missing. Mageplaza makes a free one too, however it is for Magento 2 only. We will be building a M2 site at the first of the year and I will be needing to get one for M2 as well and will consider the one from Mageplaza, Again unless someone can point out some differences that's important to the one I will need to use.

Answer 4

Did not really want to buy one right now since this would be only used for a couple of months on my M1 site and have to repurchase for M2