Comments on: 1542 spam: time for a challenge question.

By: Filmari Nunti

Filmari Nunti — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:24:13 +0000

Is part of the bussyness mio amigo. Is going to be a matter of time before the globalisation will acaparate the internet side, coming in with some good stuff like creating a global list of spammers. Somebody shoul do something about that. My goodness. I am having a good ideea. Maybe i will by a domain that could create a list with those spammers that shoul have denied acces to the web industry.

By: poze nunta

poze nunta — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:19:08 +0000

I’m running a web site on wordpress as well …i go crazy cause of those spam comments . It takes a lot of time to go through all of them and sort ‘em out.
Is it just happening to me …?…I get less spam comments on wordpress than on blogspot !

By: Spam anniversary: 13 000 spam and counting. | lucasmcdonnell.com

Spam anniversary: 13 000 spam and counting. | lucasmcdonnell.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:43:31 +0000

[...] while ago, I had decided to go with a challenge question as well as Bad Behaviour (which are both ways to block comment spam before it even happens). Unfortunately, however, Bad [...]

By: Lucas McDonnell

Lucas McDonnell — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:10:42 +0000

Good catch Tom. I decided to experiment with removing the challenge question, and I haven’t had any spam make it through the filter so far (knock on wood).

I had to remove Bad Behavior, because it was causing long, long load times in the WordPress admin interface. I’ve thought about reinstalling it and seeing if it’s better now, but just haven’t gotten around to it.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:42:50 +0000

Strange how there’s no Challenge question, Captcha or Bad Behavior test on this Reply form…

By: Lucas McDonnell

Lucas McDonnell — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 23:09:13 +0000

My pleasure John — glad to hear it was useful to you.

By: John Bennett

John Bennett — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:57:57 +0000

I’m starting to get more spam too in my comments (more than my actual comments), so I’ll probably need to incorperate something like this. Thanks for the post.

By: Lucas McDonnell

Lucas McDonnell — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:43:47 +0000

Good question Steve — I was also worried about the false positive situation. Bad Behaviour only indicates how many connection attempts it has blocked (at this point, 257). I used to go through all the spam messages just like you do, but then I just decided it was getting ridiculous to spend my time doing it.

As I said above, I looked at closing comments and trackbacks as one possible option. But then the spammers would have won. While there’s no direct way that I can tell if there are false positives being caught in Bad Behaviour blocked connections, all I can say is that I get the feeling (from the number and flow of comments) that there haven’t been any false positives.

One other interesting benefit has been that the number of connection attempts seems to be dropping off — it’s almost as if the spammers have figured out that the spam’s not getting through, and the bots are starting to give up.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:30:46 +0000

Any feedback on how Bad Behaviour has behaved in terms of false positives?

I’m a false positive paranoid meaning I spend the first 20 minutes of each day running through the ~2000 spam emails that make it into my 99% sure spam folder. Only the truly ‘enhancing’ emails get directly binned.

Also, did the year question make no difference at all? I would have assumed some of the dumber bots would have keeled over.

By: Quote Maniac

Quote Maniac — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:18:07 +0000

When I change my site from a static one to WordPress, spam is my biggest problem.

Fortunately the number is not as alarming as yours