If you’re finding that your Magento 1 website is sending spam email you’re not alone! We’ve seen an increase in enquiries from merchants looking to fix this issue. The first a store owner is made aware of this is when their email service bans them from over-sending.
So how are the spam emails being sent from Magento?
We’ve identified at least 2 areas of Magento which is being used by the Chinese spammers, these are the ‘Share your wishlist’ and ‘Send to a friend’ features.
After creating an account on your web store and adding a product to cart. The bots have free reign to send this product to ‘friends’ i.e any email they would like to. Including a Spammy message alone with the product share. Also the wishlist can be shared with a message to any emails.
We’ve identified some stores that have sent over 12000 spam emails in a single day!
Solutions
Stop Send to a friend spam
Luckily this is an easy fix, just edit your local.xml file and add the section below. Then clear your site cache.
app/etc/local.xml
...existing config file...
<default>
<sendfriend>
<email>
<enabled>0</enabled>
</email>
</sendfriend>
</default>
</config>
Don’t forget to remove the ‘Share this product’ button from the product page or you’ll annoy your customers!
Stop Wishlist spam
Wishlist is a little harder, unless you’re willing to just turn this functionality off completely.
Luckily there is an extension available for free which fixes both of these issues.
https://github.com/vnahalpara/magento-Wishlist-Share-Spam-Protector
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