Spam alert! How to protect your shop

Recently we have noticed a steep increase of spam attacks on ViArt Shop and CMS users. It can be dangerous for the following reasons:

• your host can suspend the entire website either suspecting you as a spam initiator or because your website is overloading the server;
• your e-mail account can be blocked sometimes without a chance to redeem it;
• you become automatically submitted to different spam filters as a spam website;
• besides spam there could be sent phishing e-mails so you can face criminal charges from deceived customers;
• some database tables could be broken (spammers can send over 1000 queries a second).

Solution

One of the means against spammers is a CAPTCHA application. It is integrated into ViArt Shop and is called there Random Image Validation. This feature represents an image with random numbers that user needs to type. It is strongly recommended to activate it throughout all your shop, namely:

• Administration > Products > Reviews Settings
• Administration > Products > Tell a Friend Settings
• Administration > Articles > News > quick link at the top of the page on the right ('Tell a friend' settings are present in every article subcategory)
• Administration > HelpDesk > HelpDesk Settings
• Administration > Forum > Forum Settings
• Administration > Ads > Tell a Friend Settings
• Administration > Users > Users Types > Customer > Profile Settings

If you are using CMS, Light or Standard versions

Even though your license is giving you less features than Enterprise one, YOU still HAVE ALL ViArt SCRIPTS within your version and SPAM BOTS CAN still USE THEM! It is recommended either delete these unused scripts (the ones that have support, forum and article words in their names) or you can activate Random Image Validation option with the help of these direct links (do not forget to insert you site URL before these extensions):

• admin/admin_articles.php?category_id=1
• admin/admin_articles.php?category_id=2
• admin/admin_articles.php?category_id=3
• admin/admin_articles.php?category_id=4
• admin/admin_articles.php?category_id=5
• admin/admin_articles.php?category_id=6
• admin/admin_articles.php?category_id=30
• admin/admin_support_settings.php
• admin/admin_forum_settings.php

Please do not hesitate to contact our support team in case you need any additional information.