September 9, 2011

More Ways to Reduce Spam Emails on Zen Cart Websites

Filed under: Blog Articles — Tags: , , — Jeff Weissberg @ 10:06 am

Did-You-Know?If your Zen Cart website has a ‘contact form’, which collects visitor information, be aware that spammer’s software commonly uses this feature to send unwanted emails. The solution to stopping these emails is straightforward and effective: Have your webmaster install a CAPTCHA on your ‘form’.

What is a CAPTCHA?  A CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.  CAPTCHA’s are used to prevent automated software from using your form to send spam emails.  A CAPTCHA generally uses a graphic image of random letters and numerals in lower and upper case.
Example 1: Example 2: 
The viewer needs to type in the random password correctly to submit the form. The test ensures that a computer cannot generate the correct response, as computers cannot ‘read’ the graphic image password. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human.

September 7, 2011

How To Reduce Spam Emails on Zen Cart Shopping Cart Websites

Filed under: Blog Articles — Tags: , — Jeff Weissberg @ 8:31 am

Tech TipA commonly targeted weakness of zen-cart websites is spam emails being sent through the websites using the “Tell a Friend” form. If the spam emails get too frequent your site may be suspended by the hosting service and need to be reinstated. If you feel like you’ve been having the same issue, here is a way to solve the problem by allowing only “logged-in” customers to use the Tell a Friend form.

What we need to do is change one setting in the shopping cart admin panel to disallow “guest” shoppers from using the “tell a friend” form. However, registered and logged in customers will still get to use it.

This is how to make the change:

  1. Login to the shopping cart Admin panel
  2. Go to:  Configuration –> Email Options
  3. Look for “Allow Guest To Tell A Friend” and click on that row once.
  4. To the right your choices will appear. Choose “False” and click update.

This setting change should eliminate or at least drastically reduce these spam emails from being sent.

April 2, 2009

Eliminate Form Spam with a CAPTCHA.

Filed under: Blog Articles — Tags: , — Jeff Weissberg @ 4:16 pm

If your site has a ‘form’, which collects visitor information, be aware that spammer’s software uses this feature to send you unwanted emails. The solution to stopping those emails is straightforward and effective: Have your webmaster install a CAPTCHA on your ‘form’.   CAPTCHA is an acronym for ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’.  You can find a good example on our site’s Contact Us page at: http://www.socalwebworx.com/contact_us.php

Other useful technical terms can be found at:  http://socalwebworx.sanclementedev.com/wordpress/?cat=11

Quickly reduce spam e-mails with this webmaster trick

Filed under: Blog Articles — Tags: — Jeff Weissberg @ 3:54 pm

If your site uses a general e-mail address (such as info@your_domain_name.com), do not use the word “info” in the e-mail address.  Instead change the address to contact@your_domain_name.com.  Spammers definitely target this address less frequently. Just this simple change of an e-mail address can dramatically reduce the spam in your inbox.

February 6, 2009

What is a CAPTCHA?

Filed under: Blog Articles — Tags: , — Deb Foley @ 1:06 am

A CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human.

CAPTCHA’s are used to prevent automated software from performing actions which degrade the quality of service of a given system, whether due to abuse or resource expenditure.

Additional information and resources are available at: http://www.captcha.net

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