contact form spam stopper

[coldclimber]

I have a simple contact form on my site that uses php to pass on the info the problem is the first day i put it up someone used it to send out spam emails is there a way to have a contact form or script recognise that you have already used the form once and that you can not contact us again for say 12 hours

[Twey]

None that's secure, no. If the spammers sent the messages to people other than the one whom the script was intended to contact, it's likely they injected some headers. You'll need to post the code.

Also, this should be in the PHP forum.

[mwinter]

I have a simple contact form on my site that uses php to pass on the info

Be aware that this will probably be moved to the PHP forum as that's where the problem lies.

the problem is the first day i put it up someone used it to send out spam emails

When you write, "send out spam emails", do you mean they spammed you, or used your form to spam a third party? If you meant the latter, pull down the page immediately and dump that script.

is there a way to have a contact form or script recognise that you have already used the form once and that you can not contact us again for say 12 hours

Sort of. There's no reliable way to accurately identify a particular person without some co-operation from them (such as accepting a cookie, but even that's not identifying a person: rather a browser on a particular machine), but it can be attempted. However, a well-written script will already provide that feature. You would be best off looking for an existing, well-tested system that has the functionality you need.

Mike