Comment Attacks
My site has started to really get hit hard by comment spam and a ton of fake sign-ups for the email list. I have started blocking the IP addresses of the worst attackers, and tightened down the automatic checks. I have added a number of keywords that are used to automatically mark comments as spam, and reduced the maximum number of links that are allowed before a comment gets flagged as spam.
This all seems to have helped quite a bit already, but may cause some legitimate comments to get flagged as spam. If this happens, please let me know. Currently I am manually reviewing all the comments that get flagged as spam while I try this new system out. There is going to be a trial period before anything is made permanent, so if anything doesn’t work as well as before, please let me know.
Ultimately the website should run better and there should be less spam
August 10th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
I get killed by comment spam. The Akismet plugin works great though…up until now it’s caught hundreds of spam comments and as not accidentally caught a single good one. Cheggit out.
August 10th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Justin….thanks for the tip. Just activated the latest version and will see how it works. Did you configure/modify it at all? I would like to change the auto-delete time period to 30 days for instance, but this didn’t seem like an easy thing to do at first glance
August 10th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
I don’t think I reconfigured it at all, but it has been awhile since I did the initial set-up. I check it pretty often, and since it hasn’t mis-identified anything yet I’m not too concerned about an accidental deletion.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Andrew Thanks to these kind and generous emailers I have won the lottery in Afganistan, extended certain body parts, bought a special penny stock that has doubled
to 2 cents, and now have all these new friends who inform me of all these wonder deals.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:05 am
Unlce Gary…..lucky you
Andy