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phpmailto

Spurious requests for a mailto page on server

I am trying to help with maintaining an old website.

I am getting spurious requests for /mailto URI addresses that were supposed to have opened a client side mail application instead. Here is some php data about three of today's requests:

[HTTP_USER_AGENT] => Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.10
[REQUEST_URI] => /mailto:info%40somedomain.com

[HTTP_USER_AGENT] => Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.10
[REQUEST_URI] => /mailto:info@somedomain.com

[HTTP_USER_AGENT] => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.21) Gecko/20100312 Firefox/3.6
[REQUEST_URI] => /mailto:info@somedomain.com?subject=Helpme&body=Dear%20etc

Why do the browsers attempt to open these URIs on the server instead of opening the client-side e-mail application?

Here is some example html:

<a class="emailaddress" href="mailto:info@somedomain.com?subject=Helpme&body=Dear etc">Helpme</a>

Here is another variant:

<FORM ACTION="mailto:info@somedomain.com" METHOD="POST" ENCTYPE="text/plain">
   <table>
    <TR>
        <TD width="100">Name: </TD>
        <TD>
          <INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="name" SIZE="35">
        </TD>
    </TR>
    <TR>
        <TD>Your Message</TD>
        <TD>
          <TEXTAREA NAME="text" COLS="35" ROWS="4"></TEXTAREA>
        </TD>
    </TR>
   </table>

    <input type="hidden" name="id" value="7180">
   <INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Send">
   <INPUT TYPE="reset" VALUE="Reset">
</FORM>

(Personally, I would not have implemented sending a contact form by opening the client side email client, and would also not have used a table in the form. I will suggest replacing those.)

Somehow some browsers seem to interpret this as though the user wants to open the page instead of opening the client email application.

What causes these incorrect requests to the server and what can I do about them?

Solution

  • It turns out these interpretations were done by some malfunctioning spambots trying to submit links to their sites and other generic spam. So far, no real users tried to submit a form in this way.