# Treat Contact Form 7 Messages in Foreign Scripts as Spam

> Marks a Contact Form 7 submission as spam when most of its message is written in Cyrillic, Chinese or another script your business does not use.

- Type: PHP
- Runs: Run everywhere
- Category: [Forms](https://wpide.com/library/category/forms/)
- Tags: contact-form-7, spam, language
- Author: WPIDE Team
- Installs: 0
- Updated: 2026-10-28
- Page: https://wpide.com/library/cf7-non-latin-spam/

## Code

```php
$wpide_cf7_blocked_scripts = array( 'Cyrillic', 'Han', 'Arabic', 'Hangul', 'Thai' ); // Unicode script names.
$wpide_cf7_script_share    = 0.3; // Share of letters in those scripts that marks a message as spam.

add_filter( 'wpcf7_spam', function ( $spam, $submission = null ) use ( $wpide_cf7_blocked_scripts, $wpide_cf7_script_share ) {
    if ( $spam || ! $submission ) {
        return $spam;
    }

    $text = '';
    foreach ( (array) $submission->get_posted_data() as $value ) {
        $text .= ' ' . ( is_array( $value ) ? implode( ' ', $value ) : (string) $value );
    }

    $letters = preg_match_all( '/\p{L}/u', $text );
    if ( $letters < 10 ) {
        return false;
    }

    $foreign = 0;
    foreach ( $wpide_cf7_blocked_scripts as $script ) {
        $foreign += (int) preg_match_all( '/\p{' . $script . '}/u', $text );
    }

    if ( $foreign / $letters >= $wpide_cf7_script_share ) {
        $submission->add_spam_log( array( 'agent' => 'wpide-script-filter', 'reason' => 'Message is mostly in a blocked script.' ) );
        return true;
    }

    return false;
}, 10, 2 );
```

## Notes

Remove a script from the list if you do get genuine enquiries in that language.

## How to use it

Install the free WPIDE plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpide/), find "Treat Contact Form 7 Messages in Foreign Scripts as Spam" in its snippet library and add it in one click; or create a new PHP snippet in WPIDE (or any code snippets plugin) and paste the code above. More snippets: https://wpide.com/library/