Blacklist Blocks Perfectly Good Email Addresses

[Generosus]

Good Day!

Your blacklist blocks perfectly good email addresses.

To reproduce the issue:

(1) Install Gravity Forms 2.6.7 (latest version as of today)
(2) Create a Gravity Forms form with a Email field and Text (Message) field.
(3) Add this code snippet to your functions.php file (directly or via the plugin, Code Snippets)
(4) Add your blacklist (20221105) to WP's Disallowed Comment Keys section.
(5) Enter any email address in either the Email or Message field created in (2) above.
(6) A block message will display.

Notes:

(1) If not already performed, recommend testing your list with other WordPress-compatible forms plugins such as WPForms, Contact Form 7, etc.
(2) When we use other blacklists available online, we don't have this issue.
(3) We tried to identify the list entries causing this issue with no success.
(4) When we remove your blocklist from our Disallowed Comments Key section, the issue disappears.

Please review and advise.

Thank you!

[splorp]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Could you provide links to the other blacklists mentioned above? Being able to compare a functional blacklist against mine will help narrow down what’s causing the issue.

I’ll have to purchase a Gravity Forms license to be able to test this properly.

I’ll report back once I have more information.

[Generosus]

Your list is the most comprehensive one in the market, so it's just a matter of identifying the key words or strings in your list that are causing the issue. It's possible that Gravity Forms is interpreting some of your strings or symbols as wildcards.

For example, we found that this blacklist entry: !,i is one of several that is blocking perfectly good email addresses. Unfortunately, we do not have the time to test your entire list to find all the culprits.

The list that we're using (not as comprehensive as yours) is a combination of others that do not block perfectly good email addresses. We followed the usual "trial and error" testing method to come up with a list that works for us.

Perhaps you can consult the developers of Gravity Forms for detailed assistance. The Gravity Forms Community Forum is an excellent place to obtain help or you can reach them here.

Hope this helps a bit.

Thank you!

[Generosus]

One other thing ...

We noticed your list includes entries with up to four (4) words per line. WordPress only allows one (1) word per line as stated here.

Examples:

browse around this blog
browse around this site
browse around this web
check out my blog
check out my page
check out my sire
posted on your blog
posted on your page
posted on your site
tecnico y asistencia tecnica
técnico y asistencia tecnica
tecnico y servicio tecnica

Could this be part of this issue (directly or indirectly)? Just a thought.

Thank you!

[splorp]

We noticed your list includes entries with up to four (4) words per line.
WordPress only allows one (1) word per line as stated here.

Not in my testing.

According to the Managing Spam on your Website and Managing Spam on a Site articles published on the official Learn WordPress site:

“You can also specify words, phrases, user name, email, IP address, or the browser’s user agent string to automatically place a comment in the trash.”

Entries consisting of multiple words is clearly acceptable within WordPress itself. I have not explored whether multi-word entries affect how third-party plugins such as Gravity Forms behave.

[Generosus]

Hi @splorp,

Well, that's good to know. I was simply going by WordPress' exact words:

One word or IP address per line.

So, it looks like Team WordPress needs to update the above statement.

Question: When you tested your blacklist, did you test it in both comments sections? That is: Comment Moderation and Disallowed Comment Keys.

Thank you!