How do I control spam?


We get from 5-25 spam messages into our freshdesk dashboard per hour via our portal submission page. They are clearly coming from bots. How do we get this under control? Support at Freshdesk has told us to setup a filter, but there is nothing to filter on as these are random subjects and email addresses.


58 replies

We are also receiving a fair amount of blatant spam via portal (8 this morning), it would seem that even a basic filter would be able to block these messages

I do not get a large volume of spam but do not have a large user pool currently, so about 45% of the posts I have had so far have been spam so it is awful. I am surprised that there is no real spam control in place on posting...

+1 for spam controls. Something as basic as SpamAssassin would be great.

 

Userlevel 3
Badge +8

Hello, 


We have released a SPAM filtering feature to monitor the posts and replies that are made on the Forums.


Please refer to - https://support.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/78603/page/2


We are also working on how to limit SPAM that come in as tickets too. For now, please try enabling captcha from Admin>>Customer Portal. 

Once we make more advances on this, I will keep you posted.


Anna 



Hi Anna, You really need spam checking for emails that come into Freshdesk and create tickets as there is extra work sifting through spam.
We're trialling the solution at the moment and have moved emails from gmail to Freshdesk and now we are getting a lot of spam that used to be blocked by gmail.
I think forwarding from the cpanel account means any account level filtering done at the Cpanel level and also gmail level is now bypassed.
Should be easy to set something up.

In the meantime, I'm considering a selective forward from gmail which may help the problem. This suggestion may help others.

Regards,

David


 

Spam has always been a problem and is getting really bad. I've had to create filters in my Gmail/Google apps to prevent tickets from Freshdesk from going into the Spam folder automatically, or else real tickets go there too. So now I get all the spam in my inbox and within the Freshdesk web interface. The mobile app is not able to delete and flag spam tickets either.

We've also had major problems with Spam. The Freshdesk spam filters are useless and blocking spam does nothing.

I setup Dispatch rules and even that didn't help because the spammers would simply change a word every day or two and it would keep coming.


I'm not going to complain as I use the Freshdesk free account and don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if I was a paying customer I would be expecting a lot more done to combat the problem.


What I did was to setup a GMAIL account, from our domains cPanel I forwarded all my support email addresses to the GMAIL email address.

From GMAIL I forward to Freshdesk email.


Before you do this you must setup an occasional user in Freshdesk using the GMAIL email address. This is to ensure the ticket has the customers original email address and name attached, not GMAIL.


Been trialling this for a week now and not a single bit of spam has come through. GMAIL is handling all of that in the background.


I have my support emails sent to Gmail/Google Apps and forwarded from there to Freshdesk, but in the past this led to Google filtering legitimate support requests as spam. I'll have to try it again and see how it performs now.

I haven't had Google send legit emails to Spam yet, but Freshdesk did a couple of times. Caused a few issues when Freshdesk sent them a response with a ticket number and we never replied.


I have GMAIL setup to send spam to the spam folder within Gmail and every day I very quick skim through the folder for anything that shouldn't be there.

At least if Gmail does mark a legit message as spam, the customer doesn't get a ticket confirming that we have received their email.


Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Hi ,




We've been working on a new spam algorithm for quite sometime and the release is planned in phases. We're also planning to enhance the SPAM check feature by analysing the type of emails that are marked as spam and then auto-spam such emails over a period of time. We'll publish a detailed documentation on the new spam algorithm soon!




In case if you're interested to be a part of the BETA program, please drop a note here .




Cheers!


Userlevel 4
Badge +12






@Brad



In case if the spam is coming through the portal, you can enable the Captcha option to avoid submission of tickets by bots. You can enable this under Admin -> Portals -> Settings section.




Cheers!


































Hi Aravind, very interested to see the spam issue addressed and can work with you to test the filtering. We see 2-10 spams a day where even Dispatch'r rules don't seem to help when the spam uses HTML.


 


Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Hello Mike,




Thanks for your interest in trying out the spam filter feature. I will drop you an email for confirmation of your helpdesk URL and then we can get this started :)




Cheers!



Hello Aravind,
We are interested in a spam filter solution as well.
Our fresh-desk account gets bombarded with 100-300+ spam mails daily, reaching to a whooping 30K last year.

Please advice.


Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Thanks for your interest,George. I've emailed you to confirm your account details. Please check your inbox :)




Cheers!



Hi Aravind,




I would love to be a part of this beta test as well.  We just started using Freshdesk a week ago and I would say that at least 50% of the e-mails we receive each day are SPAM. I mark them as such and also block them, but it doesn't seem to be helping. 


Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Hi AJ,




I've created a support ticket for this request and will inform you as soon as it is enabled.




Cheers!



Hi Aravind,




Good to hear you guys are tackling the SPAM issue. We receive currently more SPAM messages than real requests (around 20-30 per day) and would be happy to join the beta program too. Please let me know if you need more beta testers.


Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Thanks for your interest,Robin. One of our support agents will get in touch with you shortly.




Cheers!



To help combat spam, can you please add a Domain Blocker?




Example, we have been getting thousands of mails from QQ.com and if there was a domain blocker it would be great.




So can just add qq.com to the blocker and we will never get another mail from 1525215.qq.com or whatever.



Please include me on any updates about the spam filters you have in beta. Thanks


Any updates to this?  Is there a CAPTCHA feature we can enable when people entering tickets?  We get ALOT of automates spam tickets all the time!
Userlevel 4
Badge +12

@Support: In case if you'd like to explore more about this option , please write to support@freshdesk.com and one of our support heroes will assist you accordingly.


@Joy : I'll connect with your account manager on this and take the discussion forward.


@Abalto: Yes, you can enable the CAPTCHA option under Admin -> Portals -> Settings section and select the option "ENABLE CAPTCHA to avoid SPAM"


Cheers!

We are getting 200+ emails per day from @qq.com email addresses that are all Spam. They are clogging our dashboards so our Agents can't see current activity - it's making it very difficult to work efficiently. We really need a domain blocker or some better way to manage the Dashboard. We don't mind using a dispatcher rule to send all of these to the spam box, but we need a way to remove them from the dashboard.



The Captcha option does not work for us because these are coming in through email. 



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