Cleaning the Spam
Michael Dale | Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:06 PM
Well I finally got around to removing all the spam off my old websites, and I've disabled all the commenting. Awesome.
I also had some old contact forms that I was getting spam from too. These now have links to my main contact form.
My contact form also got a bit of an update, it now has akismet support.
3 Million Comments
Michael Dale | Fri, 21 Mar 2008 9:25 PM
I've noticed that the web server has been running slowly today.
Anyway I think I've found the problem. One of my old blogs sites is currently being spammed. Currently there are 3.3 million comments in the database!
EDIT: Problem fixed:
mysql> delete from comments WHERE id > 556;
Query OK, 3305122 rows affected (2 min 21.45 sec)
EDIT2: The spam has been coming from caravan.ru a Russian ISP (who's logo is very similar to optus' old one...).
Defensio
Michael Dale | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 11:49 AM
Defensio is an anti-spam service very similar to Akismet, except that they provide in depth spam statistics for your website.
I've just written a basic Defensio plugin for Bluetrait 2 and am giving it a test.
It looks pretty cool!
Spam
Michael Dale | Fri, 05 Oct 2007 8:17 AM
damn, they were quick. I've disabled commenting.
I'll need to go and clear out the database tonight.
Sorry about the spam!
Akismet timeout, fixed?
Michael Dale | Tue, 23 Jan 2007 11:24 AM
I think I've found the cause for Akismet not working as well as it should have.
The class I was using had a low timeout value; I've since increased this to 10 seconds, inline with the new Wordpress 2 plugin.
So hopefully that will improve the amount of spam being caught.
Spam System Upgraded
Michael Dale | Fri, 19 Jan 2007 5:50 PM
I'm testing out a new spam system I quickly wrote.
Hopefully now if you're either logged in or have posted before with the same email address your comment shouldn't be deleted.
I plan to add more tests (see post below) later.
Spam
Michael Dale | Thu, 18 Jan 2007 6:37 PM
Argh. Too much spam is getting through again; even with Akismet. So I'm in the process of writing a new spam class. The aim is to build a comment score (similar to email spam filtering programs) based on the following:
- Email Address/Name/Website
- Comment Body (number of links etc)
- If the user is registered
- If the user has successfully posted a comment before
- white and black lists
- response from akismet
- how old and how many comments a post has
So hopefully I can cut down the spam.
Spam Server
Michael Dale | Tue, 09 Jan 2007 5:56 PM
I found the following address in my logs. Looks like a spamming program. Feel free to try and take it offline.
http://serversinfo.org/VIP/master.php
EDIT: I've changed the message so it spams it own site, hopefully taking itself offline. The stop command didn't seem to work, so this is the next best thing.
EDIT2: Looks like the owner has password protected the area.
Akismet Under Load?
Michael Dale | Wed, 18 Oct 2006 6:26 PM
I've been getting a few akismet time outs lately which may be one of the reasons why some spam is making it on to this site. I should do a check against that.
Spam
Michael Dale | Mon, 09 Oct 2006 11:57 PM
Far too much spam on this site, I'm getting about 100 a day blocked by akismet, although a few are still getting through.
Anyway I've upped the spam level to maximum, meaning that anything detected as spam is not accepted (no comment moderation).
I do need to improve this still.