The Daily Haggis - Latest Comments in Summer of SPAM

Re: Summer of SPAM

Gymshoes — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 12:30:42 -0000

Aw, gee, you didn't have to post my second comment; it's long and I just wanted to let you know the problems I was having with your spam filter (which now appears to be fixed). I've discovered a couple of other tricks for thwarting spambots in WP. Bad Behavior and the blacklist have done wonders, but even so I was still getting spam on one particular post. On any given day 75%-90% of the spam would be this one old entry about the new blog program with a trackback-pingback test as the only comment. I closed comments for that entry since I was still getting spam there even after installing Bad Behavior. Thereafter I got 1-2 comments a week for that entry; the spambots obviously had cached the comment page. Today I copied the entry, title, date and timestamp. Then I deleted the entry, reposted it, editing the timestamp to the original. Even using a cached page spammers cannot post comments to it because the page URL has changed and they can't comment on a page that doesn't exits. ;-) I've also closed the comments on it, too. Naturally the repost/timestamp edit won't work on entries that already have ligitimate comments, though closing comments may eliminate most spam for those. But for an old entry with no comments reposting with an edited date/timestamp will throw off any spambots that are fixated on it. :-)

Re: Summer of SPAM

Gymshoes — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 19:09:54 -0000

Well, I've looked for a contact address to let you know that your spam filter is wigging out, but I'm not finding one. :-( I just have to hope this ends up in the moderation queue and you'll read it.

I tried to post a comment to your entry about Bee and got:

====================================
Sorry, you've been prevented from commenting on this blog.

Either your comment content was found to contain spam, or
your IP address (or a subnet of your IP address) has spammed this blog before.

If you think you got this page in error, your entered name might be too short.

You can also complain to wp.spaminator@gmail.com. View source to see why you got blocked.

Strike count: 8
=====================================

When I clicked the Spaminatorlink I got 404 not found. :-(

No clue why I'm banned. My username is 8 characters (Gymshoes). I'm not a spammmer. In fact, I've been having the same problems with spam that you mention. (I'm also a Word Press user.) Ironically, I was able to post a comment to your entry about spam, but the comment did not appear, nor did a message about the comment being moderated (this is a feature of the latest version of Word Press).

I've tried to post this comment and get the error with a strikecount 13 and again the Spaminator link is 404 Not Found. So I've edited it in the hope that it will get through. Your spam filter is seriously screwed up. :-(

Re: Summer of SPAM

Gymshoes — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 18:51:45 -0000

I'm also a Word Press user and have been having a lot of problems with the sites you mention. In addition to moderating all comments I've added the plugin Bad Behavior, http://www.ioerror.us/softw... for Word Press because I just got tired of cleaning out the moderation queue.