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    Author: Alexander

    • New option. Settings templates

      New option. Settings templates

      Dear customers, we are pleased to present you a new option that simplifies management settings if you have a lot of sites. CleanTalk allows you to create templates for the control panel and plugin settings.

      Templates for the control panel settings

      If you need the same site settings in the control panel, you can select the site whose settings you want to apply to all other sites and create a template based on it. Next, you can apply this template to one, all or several sites and the control panel settings will be applied to the selected sites.

      You can also set a default template and this template will be automatically applied to all new sites that you add to the service control panel.

      You can create several templates and apply the desired template when adding a new site. You can see detailed instructions on how to use control panel templates here https://cleantalk.org/help/dashboard-template

      Templates for Anti-Spam and Security plugins

      A new Import/Export settings option has been added to the plugin. With this option, you can create a plugin settings template and transfer the settings to your other site. When installing the plugin on a new site, you can import settings from an existing template. Import/Export option works only in the WordPress plugin.

      You can add control panel settings and site settings to one template and apply them to multiple sites at the same time, or set a default template.

      You can see detailed instructions on how to use plugin templates here
      https://cleantalk.org/help/plugin-template

      If you have any questions, add a comment and we will be happy to help you.

    • Spam Protection for WordPress Forminator – Contact Form Builder

      Spam Protection for WordPress Forminator – Contact Form Builder

      Forminator – Contact Form, Payment Form & Custom Form Builder is one of the popular WordPress form builder plugins. Any form on the website is a target for spammers and fraudsters. Like any web form, you need to protect your WordPress Forminator Contact Form from spam.

      Not your typical form-making plugin. Forminator is the easy-to-use WordPress form builder plugin for every website and situation. It’s the easiest way to create any form – contact form, order form, payment form, email form, feedback widgets, interactive polls with real-time results, buzzfeed-style “no wrong answer” quizzes, service estimators, and registration forms with payment options including PayPal and Stripe.

      CleanTalk Anti-Spam added direct integration to protect Forminator Contact Form from spam. Installing CleanTalk Anti-Spam not only protects your contact form from spam and protects also all your forms on the site, such as registrations, comments, etc.
      A complete list of CleanTalk Anti-Spam plugin features can be viewed here. https://cleantalk.org/help/introduction

      It will take you less than two minutes to protect your WordPress site with CleanTalk Anti-Spam.

      How to install CleanTalk Anti-Spam plugin to protect Forminator Contact Form

      To install the anti-spam plugin, go to your WordPress admin panel -> Plugins -> Add New
      enter cleantalk in the search box and click the Install button for “Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk”.
      After installing the plugin, click the “Activate” button and go to the plugin settings and click the “Get Access Key Automatically” button and click the “Save Settings” button.

      Your site and your Forminator Contact Form are now protected from spam.
      Or use our installation instructions.
      https://cleantalk.org/help/install-wordpress

      How to test spam protection for Forminator Contact Form

      Create a new form or go to the page of an existing one.
      You need to log out of your WP account or open the page in incognito mode.
      Fill in all the required form fields and use the test email s @ cleantalk.org (without space).
      After submitting the form, you will see a message about the block on submitting the form.


      If you have any questions, add a comment and we will be happy to help you.

    • How to change wp-login URL

      How to change wp-login URL

      Hello,

      We have updated the WordPress CleanTalk Security plugin and added a new option that allows you to change the URL of the authorization page wp-login.

      This option helps you change the default wp-login URL. Hackers use scripts for massive brute-force attacks, and since most sites use a default login page URL, hackers configure scripts for such URLs. When you change the URL of the authorization page, hackers will not have the opportunity to perform brute-force attacks in scripts in automatic mode.

      How to enable option to change wp-login URL

      The option allows you to easily change the address of the authorization page to any desired one.
      To enable the option, go to the WP Dashboard plugin settings -> Settings -> Security by CleanTalk -> General Settings and check box Change address to login script. Then add a new URL and click Save Settings.
      You can customize the URL of the page to redirect users who visited the page with the default URL of the wp-login page.

      This option does not change files and does not rewrite URLs in system files. To return the address of the default authorization page, it is enough to disable the option in the plugin settings or set a new value.

      Using an authorization page with a non-default address significantly increases the security of your site’s accounts from hacking using brute-force attacks.

      If you are using caching plugins, then you need to add a new authorization page in the caching exceptions.

      Don’t forget to bookmark your new wp-login page URL.

      If you have any questions, add a comment and we will be happy to help you.

    • Download the Blacklist IPs Database

      Download the Blacklist IPs Database

      Hello,

      We are pleased to announce the expansion of the BlackList API capabilities. We have automated the process of gaining access to downloading spam IP/Email addresses that are on the CleanTalk blacklists.

      We have supplemented the BlackList API packages and added the ability to download the blacklist database, and when purchasing the BlackList API package, you are given access to the SFTP server. You can see the price list here https://cleantalk.org/price-database-api.

      The server uploads spam data to active IP/Email addresses that currently have the BlackListed status. You can select the required level of spam activity for download addresses. The data is provided in CSV and IPSet formats and is updated once an hour.

      Offline BlackList Database is included in the BlackList API package and you can use both the spam_check API and download files with spam active addresses for use in your applications or firewall.

      See our instruction, How to connect CleanTalk IPSet spam IP Database to IPtables.

      If you have any questions, add a comment and we will be happy to help you.

    • Spam Protection for WordPress Avada Theme

      Spam Protection for WordPress Avada Theme

      If you are using Avada Theme Form Builder, then like any other web form, you need anti-spam protection. Spammers use forms on the site and send spam messages or comments through this form. We have made an integration CleanTalk anti-spam plugin with Avada Theme Form Builder.

      Now you can protect your forms from spam without using any Captcha.

      How to install CleanTalk Anti-Spam plugin to protect Avada Theme Builder

      It will take you less than 2 minutes to install CleanTalk Anti-Spam Plugin.

      To install the anti-spam plugin, go to your WordPress admin panel -> Plugins -> Add New
      enter cleantalk in the search box and click the Install button for “Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk”.
      After installing the plugin, click the “Activate” button and go to the plugin settings and click the “Get Access Key Automatically” button and click the “Save Settings” button.

      Your site and your Avada Forms are now protected from spam.
      Or use our installation instructions.
      https://cleantalk.org/help/install-wordpress

      How to test spam protection for Avada Forms

      • Create a new form or go to the page of an existing one.
      • You need to log out of your WP account or open the page in incognito mode.
      • Fill in all the required form fields and use the test email s@ cleantalk.org(without space).
      • After submitting the form, you will see a message about the block on submitting the form.

      If you have any questions, add a comment and we will be happy to help you.

      Update

      The protection works only for website visitors, not for website admins. Be sure to test the form protection using Incognito mode.

    • How to protect WordPress Events Manager from spam

      Do you have a lot of events on your WordPress site? Perhaps you want to add events on your WordPress. You will need a plugin to create events.
      Events Manager https://wordpress.org/plugins/events-manager/ allows you to create and publish different types of events on the site. The plugin adds a form to the page through which users can subscribe to the event.

      Spammers use forms on the site and send spam messages or comments through this form.

      Cleantalk added spam protection for the WordPress Events Manager plugin. We have made integration for this plugin and you can use CleanTalk anti-spam to protect your Events Manager forms from spam.

      How to install CleanTalk Anti-Spam plugin to protect Events Manager

      Installing and configuring the CleanTalk anti-spam plugin is very simple and will take no more than 2 minutes.
      To install the anti-spam plugin, go to your WordPress admin panel -> Plugins -> Add New

      enter cleantalk in the search box and click the Install button for “Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk”.

      After installing the plugin, click the “Activate” button and go to the plugin settings and click the “Get Access Key Automatically” button and click the “Save Settings” button.

      Your site and Events Manager forms are now protected from spam.
      Or use our installation instructions.
      https://cleantalk.org/help/install-wordpress

      How to test spam protection for an Events Manager form

      1. Create a new Event or go to the page of an existing one.

      events manager test 01
      events manager test 01

      2. You must log out of your WP account or open the Event page in incognito mode.

      3. Fill in all the required form fields and use the test email s@ cleantalk.org(without space).

      4. After submitting the form, you will see a message about the block on submitting the form.

      events manager test 02
      events manager test 02

      If you have any questions, add a comment and we will be happy to help you.

      Update

      The protection works only for website visitors, not for website admins. Be sure to test the form protection using Incognito mode.

    • Spam Attacks on Websites With the CleanTalk Email Address

      We have to inform you that today we once again have been attacked by spammers who used our email to send spam comments/registrations or contact forms on websites using our email address. Spammers use our email to send spam. All spam attacks have been made from IP 45.10.234.85.

    • Errors in plugin settings

      Dear costumers!

      At the moment, our anti-spam servers are experiencing increased load, therefore, errors may be displayed in the plugin settings:
      Error occurred while updating SpamFireWall local base
      Error occurred while checking account status. Error: CONNECTION_ERROR
      Error occurred while API key validating. Error: Testing is failed

      We ask you not to worry, this will not affect the operation of the anti-spam service. We are working on this and will release a new version of the WordPress plugin within 12 hours. With decreasing server load, all errors will disappear.

      Thank you!

      Update 02 Feb 2020

      The issue completely solved. All servers are working in normal state. We are sorry for the bad experience and for the inconvenience.

    • Additional email address to receive CleanTalk Reports for all services

      We have expanded the ability to add an additional email address to receive email reports. A new option allows you to send reports for all services provided by CleanTalk.

      This is necessary for customers who care about receiving notifications to other site administrators or webmasters.

      If you want the report to come not only to you but also to your other employees, use this option to add email addresses.

      Learn more, how to grant the rights.

      If you have any questions, you can contact our support team. https://cleantalk.org/my/support/open

    • How Can You Manage Access for Spiders, Crawlers and Other Bots on Your Website? Protecting From Content and Personal Data Parsing

      Every day your website is being visited by different bots, the majority of their visits are invisible to you even in Google Analytics, however, it doesn’t mean that the bots don’t visit your website. Your web server logs can help you with the visit statistics or you can install the CleanTalk Security Plugin so you can see all bot requests in your Security Firewall statistics including all types of bots. To learn more about the CleanTalk Security for websites, please go here: https://cleantalk.org/help/security-features

      Website owners and webmasters try to give full access to web crawlers for indexing their websites. But there are bots that are not needed for the functioning of your website and you don’t use the company services that their bots provide.

      Frequently, the number of bot visits could be higher than the number of real user visits. Aggressive scanning and a lot of questionable visits of bots may be unwanted and can load your webserver or you just don’t want to give information about your website.

      How to Protect Your Website From Content, Personal Data and Black SEO Parsing

      Bad bots not only send spam but they try to hack websites, do parsing and copying content, look for vulnerabilities, can collect any data from websites including email addresses, user names, user contacts and so on. Settings up the file “robots.txt” not always helpful and often useless because such bots can ignore those rules.

      Personal data might be sold afterward and can be used in other types of fraud, spam/flood in mailing lists, phone numbers and etc. Copied information could be published under a different name.

      Price parsing, parsing goods might be used by competitors, pictures of goods might be used on other websites and etc.

      Bots can click ads, links, etc. either on your website or messing with your ads. Or they could try lowering your website index rank by increasing the number of Bounce rate. Going to the website from search results and the length of their visit is very short.

      To block bad bots CleanTalk added a new option Anti-Crawler https://cleantalk.org/help/anti-flood-and-anti-crawler. Official bots will not be blocked by this option such as Yandex, Mail.ru, Baidu. While using this new option a part of automatic bots will be blocked on the second visit.

      Or there is an alternative way when any official service, like MOZ.org for example, that doesn’t have its own IP address range and doesn’t have DNS records for its bots so it’s impossible to identify them, so the Anti-Crawler option will block these bots. To avoid that you can whitelist User-Agents of the bots.

      For our clients who want to restrict access to their websites for such official bots or vice versa who want to allow the bots, we added tools to set up the Anti-Crawler option.

      To control your Personal Lists for the Anti-Crawler option, go to your administrator panel of your website WordPress Dashboard —> Settings —> Anti-Spam by CleanTalk —> Advanced Settings) and enable the option “Block bots by User-Agents”. Our guide is here: https://cleantalk.org/help/filter-ua

      Google bots and Bing bots are whitelisted by default and it can not be changed.

      Here is the current list of the User-Agents of bots:


      Mail.ru
      SEOkicks-Robot
      Sogou Spider
      Applebot
      Pingdom.com Bot
      Akamai Crawler
      Rogerbot – MOZ.org
      FacebookBot
      Twitterbot
      HuaweiWebCatBot
      Pinterest Bot
      GTmetrix
      CloudFlare crawler
      Serpstatbot
      Archive.org_bot
      Alexabot
      Yandex
      Baidu
      AhrefsBot
      DuckDuckGo
      Semrush
      Seznam
      Petalbot
      Wikipedia Crawler
      Rambler Bot
      AspiegelBot – HuaweiWebCatBot

      You can put any bot from the list above to your black or white list.
      As we gather more statistics we will add more User-Agents of bots to the list.

      Even if you don’t plan to use black/white lists for the bots and the option Anti-Crawler is enabled in the CleanTalk plugin, we recommend enabling the option “Block bots by User-Agents” too. The Google bots and the Bing bots will be whitelisted for your website in any case.

      If you have any questions, you can contact our support team. https://cleantalk.org/my/support/open

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