Tell a Friend Feature

How to prevent abuse

[Krapulator]

I am about to implement a tell-a-friend type of feature on a website. It will allow someone to enter their email address and a message and specify a recipient. The email will then be sent from the server with the senders details.

Obviously a feature like this could be abused by spammers or other misguided individuals - I'm just wondering if anyone can provide advice on the best ways to prevent abuse.

Thanks in advance.

[NameNick]

Krapulator,

I know of a Tell A Friend script (PHP) that logs the sender's e-mail, recipient's e-mail and IP address of the sender. You can set how often - based on the e-mails and IP address - someone is allowed to use the Tell A Friend script. That script can also check the referer. Only sites that are on a white list of servers can post messages.

I think that are some effective features to prevent abuse.

NN

[txbakers]

I wrote a Tell-a-Friend script in ASP for my site but only registered users can get to it after they login.

Plus, I have the script record the information in a database, and send me an email each time someone tells a friend.