December 19, 2005 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Web hosting provider CW3 (http://www.cw3host.com) has announced it has developed a script that will counter Email Form Mail Hijacking – what the company regards as one of the biggest problems on the Internet.
Email Form Mail Hijacking occurs when spammers take over the functioning of an email form to enable them to send ‘spam’ and other malicious mail using the email forms hosted on a website. To indicate the size of a problem, abusers only need find a website which has a ‘contact us’ page email form and a Google search for 'contact us' reveals 4,820,000,000 returns – all potential spammer targets. In addition, many web applications have email forms only visible to registered users which can also be utilized by spammers.
The seriousness of the problem prompted CW3 to consider a solution and their response was a PHP script that blocks Potential Spam email by blocking abuse attempts. There is also a test to see if mail is being sent by a website owner's mail form to prevent automated scripts being used. Email which contains the IP address of the abuser is sent to the website owner if abuse attempts take place.
Testing on a number of web sites has indicated that CW3’s easy to install script is effective against mail form abuse and can quickly replace current mail forms and scripts that are prone to abuse. The script is also accessible to people with limited experience using scripts. CW3’s script is free and offered at http://www.netbizcity.net/mail_script or by searching 'email abuse' at HotScripts.com (http://www.hotscripts.com).
