Category: News and Updates

  • Anti-Spam pricing update 2022

    Anti-Spam pricing update 2022

    It’s been 8 years since the last pricing change. Since that moment, spam bots become smarter every day and quality requirements for anti-spam services have greatly increased. We’re updating our prices so that we can continue to offer you the best product quality and support experience. 

    As always, we offer a range of plans, so new clients can pick a price that works for their budget. New clients can also easily compare services between leading anti-spam services and ensure that the prices are quite reasonable.

    Before

    From August 10 and on

    The new prices will apply on August 10, 2022.

    The increase will only affect the purchase of new licenses. Previously paid licenses (before August 10, 2022) can be renewed at the previous price from the Dashboard or by auto-pay.

  • Custom text messages for Security FireWall Block Page

    Custom text messages for Security FireWall Block Page

    We’re glad to introduce the new feature of our Security Extra Package.

    When you use Personal Black Lists (including blocking by country) users see a default message “This is the testing page for Security FireWall” but now you can change it. The message can include your email or phone number. In that case, you can collect data about the reasons for false positives.

    How to create a custom message

    Step 1: Go to your Dashboard => Security. Select your website and click on Settings.

    Step2: Scroll down to Message for forbidden visitors and check it. After that you can type any text you want including emails and phone numbers. When finished just press the Update button.

    That’s it! Your custom message is enabled and updated. After about 10 minutes you can take a look at your Security FireWall block page.

    How to preview your block page

    Step 1: Go to Dashboard => Security => Your website Settings (exactly like it was described above). Then click on Testing Security FireWall.

    Step 2: After that, your Security FireWall testing page will appear. Here you can preview your custom message and edit it if needed.

    Get your Website Security now

     

  • Spam filtering service improved

    Spam filtering service improved

    We have improved our spam filtering service for non-existent emails. Specifically, we’ve added Encrypted SMTP support to the Email address validation service. Generally, it makes the service much more efficient as this Encrypted SMTP method wasn’t used before in our plugins.

    Checking emails for existence is available for all Anti-Spam plugins and is included in the standard package. You can also try our Email Checker Web Interface.

  • New feature in Website Security FireWall Log

    New feature in Website Security FireWall Log

    Your website is regularly visited by different bots. The “bad” ones are blocked by your Security FireWall before they even reach your website, but what happens with the “good” ones like Google, Bing, and MSN? From now you can use Security FireWall Log to find out, what ”good“ bot visit your site and how many actions they provide there.

    What exact information can you get:

    • Date
    • Website
    • URL of visited website
    • Bot IP
    • Hostname (in case it can be defined)
    • Browser used by bot
    • Bot country
    • Quantity of requests (hits)
    • FireWall result

    How it works

    Step 1: Go to your Security Dashboard. Choose “Site Security” in the “Services” menu.

    Step 2: Go to your Security FireWall Log:

    In order to find information about some specific bot just type in the name of it (or part of the name).

    From that page, you may decide whether you want to block one of these bots or not.

    How to block bots by User-Agent

    Feel free to block any bot using our special guide.

  • A minor security vulnerability in Anti-Spam by CleanTalk for WordPress prior 5.171.1

    A minor security vulnerability in Anti-Spam by CleanTalk for WordPress prior 5.171.1

    We have fixed a minor security vulnerability in Anti-Spam by CleanTalk for WordPress. The vulnerability in the plugin interface can still be exploited in versions till 5.171.2. You can see the changelog here.

    You can check the current version of the plugin in the list of your installed plugins.

    In case you use one of these previous versions, please be sure to update the plugin to the latest stable version as soon as you read this post using our special guide.

  • How to protect your Open Journal Systems (OJS) website from spam using the Universal Anti-Spam Plugin

    How to protect your Open Journal Systems (OJS) website from spam using the Universal Anti-Spam Plugin

    Installing the Anti-Spam service by CleanTalk takes about 10 minutes and grants full spam protection for all the forms on your website. It could be a comment form, a registration form, a feedback form, or any other. Just follow the steps below.

    Step 1: Make backup copies of your website files and database.

    Step 2: Download and unzip the “CleanTalk” folder into your websites’ ROOT folder.

    Step 3: Proceed to address (your_website_name/cleantalk/install.php):

    Steo 4: Create your CleanTalk account here.

    Step 5: Enter your email and password and then click the “LOGIN” button to continue with the installation.

    At the end of the successful installation, you will see this message

    To enter the plugin settings go to (your_website_name/cleantalk/settings.php). Here you can manage the plugin options, see statistics and uninstall the plugin.

    How to check that the Anti-Spam already works with your OJS website

    Go to any form on your site (e.g. registration form) and type in

    You can test the work of Anti-Spam protection by using a test email s @ cleantalk.org (without spaces). Fill in all the required form fields and send a form.

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

    That’s it. From now on your Open Journal System website forms are fully protected from spam.

  • CleanTalk lets you control the geographic location where your data is stored

    CleanTalk lets you control the geographic location where your data is stored

    Good news for our EU clients: from now on you can store all your CleanTalk Data exclusively on EU servers. We have developed a data storage system based on geographic location to help you comply with the GDPR policy. If you choose to store data only in the EU, you will be sure that this data will not be stored in other locations. The choice of storage location will not affect the speed of data processing. 

    By default, data is stored on servers with no connection to the location, but now we allow you to transfer and store data already by geography.

    How to change the data storage location to EU

    Step 1: Log in to your CleanTalk Dashboard.

    Stel 2: Open the menu by clicking on your profile name in the upper right corner, then click on the Profile link. Or just use this link.

    Step 3: Open the Profile Options section. Find the Personal data storage server option. The description shows which servers are currently used to store your CleanTalk data.

    Step 4: Select the needed option from the drop-down list and click Apply. The transfer will begin. This may take 10-20 minutes (be sure to refresh the page to see the results).

  • Our new web service: Website Uptime Monitoring

    Our new web service: Website Uptime Monitoring

    Does your website work correctly right now? Is its loading speed convenient for visitors? Are you sure it is available 24/7 for all your potential customers?

    If all your answers are “Yes, sure” then you got our respect. Otherwise, we highly recommend you get control of your website availability and loading speed. Because all of this can greatly affect your website search ranking or lower the number of visitors returned to your website.

    And from now it has its own public interface.

    As a reminder, here are some reasons for you to start Uptime Monitoring:

    Uptime control
    One of the most important parameters of a website is its reliability and speed, which means a website is available to guests and customers 100% of its work time.

    Load speed monitoring
    Additionally, the service monitors your website load speed. It shows the exact time how long it takes to load each website page.

    Real-time statistics
    The statistics demonstrate changes of data in real-time, so you can identify the time of the heaviest load and see what caused such load in the first place.

    Immediate notification 24/7
    The service will inform you when your website became unavailable for your visitors, when the access was restored and how much time your website was down.

    More stable and faster
    The more stable and faster your website works the better for the SEO, your visitors and your business growth.

    Every-minute checking
    The Website Uptime Monitoring checks whether your website is accessible or not every minute and it does that from different checkpoints simultaneously.

     

  • «Collect details about browsers» option will be removed

    «Collect details about browsers» option will be removed

    The end of the year is a perfect time to clean up and get rid of all unnecessary.

    So we have made a decision to remove «Collect information about browsers» option from our Anti-Spam plugin for WordPress. It is no longer needed or useful. It will be fully deleted on December 2.

    «Collect information about browsers» option

    You can always find all the advanced options of Anti-Spam plugin going to [YOUR_WEBSITE]/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=cleantalk and clicking on Advanced Options link.

  • Updates for spam_check() API method

    Updates for spam_check() API method

    Keeping you updated with the latest changes about API of the spam_check method.

    The 3 following parameters were removed from the API of the spam_check() method due to lack of demand:

    frequency_time_10m - 10 minutes activity
    frequency_time_1h - 1 hour activity
    frequency_time_24h - 24 hours activity

    Instead of these 3 parameters, we added the “spam_frequency_24h” parameter, which shows the number of spam requests from the address over the past 24 hours.

    You can always find the API method description here: https://cleantalk.org/help/api-spam-check.

    And the description of all parameters here: https://cleantalk.org/help/api-spam-check#response-explanation.