Blocking IP Addresses for form fills

[Michael2]

It would be great if you could block certain IP addresses from form fills. I know you can block email domains or filter IP addresses for traffic but would be great to block certain IP's from downloading content. Eliminates the possibility of competitors looking at clients' content.

[roisinkirby]

Hey @Michael2 it's not possible to prevent users with certain IP Addresses from submitting forms to download content (even if it were, they could easily change their location/IP). 

Would it meet your use-case to use password protected Landing Pages?

If not, could you provide some more detail on you, your business, and your use case for restricting form submissions?

[staci1074]

We have customers fill out a form then we email them the requested content, however our competitors are often "borrowing" our content.  If I block their email domain the will just use another email address and it will be harder to track. I'd like to flag their IP and let them get an error message when they try to load the page, or be able to flag them in Hubspot to not recieve content if they fill out the form.   I'm not sure a password protected landing page would really work for us.

[JerryReid]

Maybe try to unsubscribe them?

[RachelThorman]

We are interested in getting this set up as well!

[mreyes]

We also need to block people from other countries from filling out our forms.

Please!!

[2Theo]

I also need to block people, even from seeing particular pages based on IP

[susanmsi]

We also need to block form submits from international locations. We only offer products and pricing in the USA and 99% of the international forms submissions are spam/scams. Dealing with those emails - including removing them from Hubspot - hurts our productivity. Thanks!

[erikaatrecurly]

+1 here! Would be very helpful. Same boat as @staci1074 and @Michael2

[mattay]

We have a use case where we get guest post spammers that are using our contact-us forms to spam us. I usually just delete the record but it's annoying.

Maybe it's a combination of email domain + ip address that identifies these? Maybe, a first step could be to flag the contact as spam, not unlike the function in an email service provider?

[cjmaurer]

Yup. We're a payroll company. Our industry is no stranger to scammers who inquire about direct deposit for their "employees" only to route all those deposited funds into their personal bank accounts. We've become pretty good at sniffing them out, but when they fill out a "request a quote" form it turns into a waste of time. While we can't prevent anyone from doing it a first time, many come back and try again weeks or months later. So it would be nice to block those form submissions by IP.

[afinta]

Yes -  agree - blocking IPs is a necessary feature Hubspot users need - 

[jruocco]

Hello, have you tried blocking the ip addresses from accessing a particular URL? 
https://wpsites.net/wordpress-tips/how-to-block-an-i-p-address-from-accessing-your-website-using-ip-...

[rtruncale]

For a very short period of time, I was able to view contacts IP addresses in HubSpot - then I added those to a custom workflow I put together. Anytime the IP address was associated to a recent form submission, my workflow would immediately pull that contact/deal/company out of any pending workflows. Unfortunately IP addresses are no longer available. 

I also put together a similar workflow with three custom field properties. 1) Deactivate Contact, 2) Deactivate Deal, 3) Deactivate Company. We use this for prospective spam clients and current clients who we will no longer do business with. 

Whenever any of these are marked yes, it adds the contact to the workflow, pulls the contact/deal out of any HubSpot workflows, and keeps them permanently in the Deactivated Workflow. If the contact then tries to submit another form, no interactions will happen with this contact and they will be placed in a black hole loop. If the contact tries to use another email and does not clear cookies, the email will be associated to the current contact, therefore placing that email also in a black hole. This works pretty well, except if a contact catches on, clears cookies, and/or uses a different computer, etc. 

Ideally, can we just have IP addresses in HubSpot again? 

[miesolutions-dj]

+1 plus what @mreyes mentioned about blocking specific countries with IP from willing out a form.

[JoeMayall]

Hi HubSpot Community,

My name is Joe, I'm the Ideas Forum Manager. I've been in contact with the HubSpot product team about this Idea, and I wanted to provide a quick update.

We appreciate all the feedback you’ve shared here to help our team evaluate this feature request. However, at this time, this functionality is not something our team is planning to build into HubSpot. This is certainly subject to change in the future, so feel free to leave feedback if you'd like. We'll update this thread if our plans change.

Best,
Joe
Ideas Forum Manager

[RachelCampbell]

All other CRMs I have ever worked with allow access to IP Addresses and so DID HubSpot, but they removed our ability to protect ourselves from DDoS attacks! This is because they are following laws for other nations and not caring that it leaves American Businesses open to being attacked! 

Everything requires the IP Address to block a spam attack and these contact forms are often used to find a way to break a site. No plugin is capable of blocking without an IP Address fully. We can block the emails and I recommend CleanTalk over Ithemes Security since Ithemes can break your code easily. BUT HubSpot knows this is a problem for users and DOES NOT CARE! THAT IS THE BIGGER ISSUE HERE!! They do not VALUE THEIR CUSTOMERS NEEDS OR PROTECTION! 

And to be clear some people will pay someone in another country as little as $150 and have a DDoS attack on your site for weeks!! They use the contact forms to break in and they are getting wise to HubSpot. You cannot even block with the CDN without the IP Address! You have to block an entire location! Like a whole country or an entire city! SO THIS SHOULD BE FIXED BUT HUBSPOT DOES NOT CARE ABOUT US! THEY HAVE THE DATA WE JUST CAN'T HAVE IT SO THAT THEY COMPLY WITH OTHER NATION'S LAWS! THIS IS SOMETHING EVERY COMPANY SHOULD BE COMPLAINING TO THEM ABOUT!! 

[CraigDavidiuk]

I get over 20 spam inquiries trying to be my factory from China every month.  They waste our time, skew our marketing stats and drive up our contact count if we neglect to delete them. Which is possible because there are so many and you can't catch them all and we get 200 inquiries a month. They also steal intel on how we do business. 

[JForeman]

I will one up this request to at least be able to see the IP address of the submissions. If this is not going to be supported then please explain to all of us why Hubspot has taken this route. I contract with many companies, both International and U.S. based and if this is going to continue as is I may consider using a different platform for their needs. I love Hubspot but this issue is a BIG one for trying to manage contacts, block spam and ensure that sales teams are not wasting their time on scammers.

[BB1]

I would like to hear from Hubspot how we can block visitors to our site based on IP. Maybe they can make the option like they have with cookie publication, to opt out of the GDPR opt-in for non-EU companies.

For now, is there a way to block someone based on their cookie? For example, can we add data to a field on their contact which will block them from our pages or at least form submissions?

Thanks for all the posters here!

[jruocco]

Hi Everyone! my understanding is that it is possible to block I.P. address's by logging into your DNS provider. I hope this blog is helpful 🙂 

https://www.godaddy.com/help/allow-or-block-website-access-27422

I heard blocking i.p. addresses is like playing a game of whack-a-mole. It is so easy to change ones I.P. address nowadays that is is not an effective deterrent. I have had a better experience by enabling Captcha on my forms to prevent spam submissions.