Comment spam: What a fucking annoyance
 

I have one particular spammer right now whacking a non-adult site of mine, one comment every hour for the last 5 days. All of it gambling and financial "help" scams.

Most interestingly, he is posting comments without being a registered user, although my site requires you to be registered to post comments. Anyone got an idea on this? (wordpress 2.0.2)

Alex

That unfortunately is why I removed the comment fields from my template.

Well, I have added a couple of things to the site to see, most notably a "trackback spam" blocker, which would appear to be the way that this dumbass was trying to pollute my site. I will be keeping an eye out, if this works I will likely spread that to other sites.

Thankfully my comments on that site were all on "must be approved" so it was pretty easy to get rid of all of his insurance and refinancing scams in one shot without anyone in the public ever seeing them.

Fuckers like this make the internet a fucking wasteland of useless shit, misleading links, and absolute fucking scams.

Alex

Preacher, I know sometimes that action can be the most useful thing you can do, but as I read an article recently, I strongly believe that blogging isn't "full" without comments and trackbacks.

Now Alex, you could try banning his IP from the Control Panel :)

I get that too and it is a pain in the ass to say the least. :(

The last few days I've been inundated with comment spam, 60-70/day. A couple of hours ago I installed Bad Behavior and so far - knock on wood - nothing.

alessando, he was using every open relay in the universe... and potentially even zombie PCs that have spyware on them. Never the same IP twice.

Alex

Cool, I just installed that to a guestbook of a mainstream site that gets spammed all the time. Let's see if it works. I'll keep ya posted.

It is one of the reasons I finally gave up on bBlog. No spam control. I did hack in a word filter but what a pain in the ass that was and I still get around 100 trackback spam a day that it seems isn't filtered through my word filter.

I do agree it's fuckers like this that take a perfectly good thing and turn it into a nightmare.

alessandro, I agree that comments and trackbacks are a major part of blogging but many of the large mainstream blogs have turned them off simply because the large amounts of spam they recieve are impossible to deal with.

That's a real big pain in the ass then.

What I really am worried about is this:

alessandro, I think he is using a variation on the calls to trackbacks, which is an interesting way to get things in. It can also happen I think by calling the comment POSTING script directly, which means they can fake all sorts of stuff. I put in a little plugin that blocks direct calls to the comments script and this particular spammer has stopped since.

Alex

Glad to hear you got rid of that guy. Atm I'm not getting too many spam comments and I can handle it by hand, but by the time passing there will be more and I'll have to fight it back. Gotta get some filters/plugings in place too.

Ugh. Some asshole sent 100+ spam comments in the past day. Gambling, credit cards, insurance, hotels, mortgage. None of them make it through, because I have all comments set to admin approval. But my comments blacklist is getting long. If the blacklist doesn't work, I'll look for a plugin or just shut off comments.

I'm using Movabletype and it's built in spam filters seems to catch just about all of it so it hasn't been a problem for me.

Bad Behavior killed my spam dead instantly. Nothing, zero, zilch, nada!

Yeah I just got on someones comment spam list in the last couple days and getting 100+ comments a day. PITA and gonna have t look into it.

http://www.deletedbrain.com/ was getting hit by a spam bot... all of the "comments" were for under*ge and CP sites... that pissed me off. It was a good thing that I had my settings so that I have to review each comment, but after the 100th spam CP comment, I included my settings so that anybody who wants to comment needs to register. If they are fucktards, their IP is recorded. It won't help if someone registers a shitload of accounts, but I will still have to review the comments, and delete any accounts that piss me off.

I use word verification stuff and I haven't had a problem at all since then... and I really think blogs are more fun with comments, personally! That's one reason I don't like WP blogs, having to be a registered user is going to cut down on participation. Seems hard enough to get people to participate without giving them more hoops. Word verification only takes an extra second while they post, but seems to keep the spam out... thus far, anyways! :)

Real true comments from surfers are very valuable as they allow you to learn from your visitors what sort of direction to take so your blog is more valuable to them.

Spammers are right there researching every exploit they can and ruining it all.

Seeing as forums and blogs are kind of similar in nature, it's worthwhile to see what sort of tools and methods are used to keep the spammers in check. I have toyed around with the idea of having moderators, but none of the people who have registered for accounts have left more than one or two comments. (if that)

bunky

tamara, these particular spammers are able to add comments WITHOUT registering, without going through that process. I add a secret word thing, and it did nothing, because they are not going through the submit page.

Automated spam calling the comment adding script directly... a pain :)

Alex