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Spam attacks
It’s never happened before, but I got the crap spammed out of me last night. Nearly 100 spam comments were left on my TXP blog overnight, all on different articles. I’ve been a little out of the loop lately. I’m wondering what are the recommended measures to combat comment spam these days?
Thanks,
theturninggate
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Re: Spam attacks
Some plugin might be of help. I also had an attack similar to this some 10 months ago. Did nothing apart from banning the ips for a couple of months. Spam commenting since has been very sparse.
Last edited by colak (2008-07-09 05:01:36)
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Spam attacks
Out of interest, because I’ve never been comment spammed apart from single occurences, did the spam contain less<than and more>than characters, eg for html like a link?
Dozy P My attempt at music
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Re: Spam attacks
Hi Peter… In my case, i don’t remember. When it happened I remember thinking that it was only a matter of time before they attacked. I deleted all those comments when I deleted the banned IPs…
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Spam attacks
I get many attempts to leave comments at txpq which are unsuccessful. I only discovered last night when maniqui tried to leave a comment which included ‘<’ and ‘>’ in it that it was a problem for genuine visitors. I’ve since found out that there’s mod_security in place on my server that is causing that. I also think it is why I don’t get any comment spam. I can get by with missing out the greater than and less than, perhaps you can too? Although sites that discuss code a lot would not want this, perhaps it is worth inquiring from your server provider if they can implement this? I can email you more details if you want.
Dozy P My attempt at music
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Re: Spam attacks
I continue to be flooded with comment spam. I’m getting about 200 messages a day, mostly looking similar to this one, with variations in gibberish and URLs:
Name: Opytqsixvn
E-mail: sntkwbu@hwamdffyxu.lv
Website: http://benq-u700.weebly.com/
Comment: Okqahfqj <a href=“http://benq-u700.weebly.com/”>BenQ U700</a> taswaasl [url=http://benq-u700.weebly.com/]BenQ U700[/url] tzqyajj [link=http://benq-u700.weebly.com/]BenQ U700[/link] fzfdtzjy [url]http://benq-u700.weebly.com/[/url]
I’ve installed nko_spamurl_blocker and wlk_defensio plugins. I had previously been using mrw_spamkeywords_urlcount. The good is that they’re identifying and hiding the spam. The bad is that the spam is still making its way into my database and flooding my inbox with notifications. I want a plugin that prevents the spam from getting that far, but none of the available options seem to do that. Rather than prevent spam, they only moderate it. That spares my visitors having to see the stuff, but it doesn’t save me any time at all as I still have to ban IPs, delete comments from the database and clean my inbox.
Last edited by theturninggate (2008-07-11 04:33:53)
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Re: Spam attacks
Perhaps you’re being targeted because your website itself is spam? At least to my eyes it is.
Dozy P My attempt at music
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Re: Spam attacks
And it doesn’t seem to be powered by txp
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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#10 2008-07-11 15:36:52
- masa
- Member
- From: North Wales, UK
- Registered: 2005-11-25
- Posts: 1,095
Re: Spam attacks
I think Matthew made a typo when entering his domain name in the profile, it should probably be theturninggate.net
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Re: Spam attacks
Looks like you’re right, Martin. Matthew, please fix your profile website or offer them $20 for the .com! I’m glad to find you’re not a spammer reaping the crop of what you have sown!
Dozy P My attempt at music
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Re: Spam attacks
Well – I might have the answer to some of your problems thanks to sencer’s input back in 2006
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Spam attacks
LOL! In comment #5 I mentioned that mod_security had been preventing me getting comment spam. What I did not mention was that my hosts turned it off for me so people could post code in comments. And guess what? Yes, I’ve just had around 100 comments spams. This is a first for me. It’s from 89.149.244.45-internetserviceteam.com which is a German IP address. Anyway, I’ve asked for mod_security to be reinstated, so we’ll see if they can leave comments now…
Dozy P My attempt at music
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#14 2008-07-11 19:15:38
- masa
- Member
- From: North Wales, UK
- Registered: 2005-11-25
- Posts: 1,095
Re: Spam attacks
Now I’m curious as to what else is affected by having mod_security on/off.
I had to disable it to get ebl_upload to work on a site, but it isn’t set up to accept comments anyway. So I should be fine, shouldn’t I ?!
According to Joynet’s technote it only protects against referrer and comment spam.
Last edited by masa (2008-07-11 19:17:10)
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Re: Spam attacks
Sorry about the expired domain. I had a domain fiasco a while back with my hosting company at the time and ended up having to change domains to get away from them. I forgot to update my profile here. www.theturninggate.net is the correct domain.
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