I’m utterly sick and tired of comment spam, I get about one every two or three minutes. I have Spam Karma installed, and that keeps the spam off the page, but I get emails about the spam and it takes up my bandwidth. So, I’ve installed Referrer Karma which is supposed to block certain IPs from even reaching your site. It even integrates with the Spam Karma balcklist. You can see the logs here, and it seems to be working OK so far.
Please, if you have any issues accessing the site, please let me know. Erm, is it worth me putting that? If you can’t access the site, you can’t see it…..
I also added a rewrite rule to my .htaccess file, as suggested by Dr. Dave:
RewriteRule ^blog/.*
http://shakykaiser.com/blog/wp-content/referrer-karma.php
?rk_redirect_to=&rk_ban_this_ip=1 [NC,L]
This rule insures that any spambot randomly trying to locate a Wordpress script (e.g. wp-comments-post.php) will end up in my permanent banlist: not only will they receive a 403, but the next time they try accessing any other areas of my blog, they’ll still receive a 403.
So let’s see, spam count up until now was 3224, plus the 1400 I reset when I fooked something up, 1000 of which came in the last day or so. Let’s see if this slows them down.
UPDATE: 20 mins in and it’s already blocked 27 attempts.
— United States (definitely maybe)
I tried to post an hilarious and pithy comment from an Internet cafe in Phuket and SpamKarma told me I was spam and to fuck off forthwith without even asking me to check the wonky and easily misinterpreted numbers and digits. If I tried to repost it would ban me (or that particular internet cafe) forever. Not such a threat really.
Maybe your (genuine) spam susceptibility thing is a Wordpress issue - I use pMachine and get none - but you have to be a member of the exclusive E@L club to post… I didn’t know this shite existed when I was choosing blog engines.
E@L
Ah. Spam Karma can get it wrong, but your only the second I’ve heard of since I installed it.
Might be able to reduce the stringency of the tests now I’m using referrer karma.
Well I just tried to leave a comment at E@L and was told my comment couldn’t be accepted at this time ……… which is not the first time either.
Mia - maybe I was drafting a post at the time myself and the database was open. I don’t know! Please try again. Maybe.
FriskoDude says it (the Comment Monster!) won’t let him post either…
And just having said I get no spam, a freaking robot called sony.vdigital-camcorders.com just managed to get itself memberized.
Frustrating-lah! Time to change to another blog-engine?
I use Blogger from Google and have never had any problems with comment spam, and that seems true of my Blogger users. Not sure why, but Wordpress and Moveable Type have long had problems in this department, so I suspect it’s a shortcoming with particular blogging engines. And I haven’t given up on Expat at Large comments, but it’s always seems difficult to get in there and make comments, even after registration. Do lighten up on that, E, and I’ll bother you again with my dumb comments.
Carl
4 out of 5 of my daily emails are spam/scam!
I’ll try Karma out. Clamp the Spams!
Thanks, Shaky.
Lancelord .. you mean comment spam? Are you not on blogger?
F-Dude! ME?? Lighten up???? Any lighter I’d just float away! Particularly with this diet actually working… finally… (down about 8-9kgs, yay!)
It’s not like I don’t want, need, crave, despair over the lack of yours and Mia’s comments - there must be literally …. one or two others having the same problem…
As soon as I’m certain it’s safe (visions of Dr Marathon Man leaning over me with a whirring dental drill - eeez eeet ZZZaaaaffffffe?) I’m going to update my pMachine to the latest version or to Expression Engine… It’s good not getting spam, but it’s bad not getting any of your genu-whine comments!
E@L