Combating Comment Spam
Warning!!! Geeky content below. Not so useful for those not using WordPress. But leave a comment or two so that I know that all my plugin is working fine, and you, as my reader can leave comment properly.
Fighting spam in my blog is a pain in the ass. I used to love Bad Behavior and how effective it is in preventing those fucking spambots from entering my blog. It works. But the recent version when it starts to use public spam listing, my own IP is detected as spam and I can’t perform any single shit on my blog. I tried changing my IP, but it seems like THE WHOLE TMNET IP RANGE IS BLOCKED! What the hell? Malaysian full of spammer is it? I have no choice but to left Bad Behavior plugin deactivated in my blog. I know most of my visitors is Malaysian, blocking them and myself is a stupid action.
Then I found out that there’s too many Trackback spam on my site. Although Spam Karma and Akismet successfully block and put them into spam list, but deleting a thousands of them a day is such a tired work. I can leave them alone, but as it accumulate day by day, it clogs up my database. So, I decided to try this solution. It works by blocking all trackback queries send to wp-trackback.php instead of the usual pretty permalink. I haven’t test whether this plugin will block legitimate trackback, but to see trackback to my site is rare. Well, I will test when I setup a sandbox. So far I don’t see any Trackback spam caught by Spam Karma, I guess it works.
As for normal comment spam, Spam Karma and Akismet works. But I’m not sure which plugin is messing up, because I kept receiving thousands emails on comments on my blog. But when I check my site, all those comments are not published, since it is all spam. Weird, last time this is not how it works. If a comment is blocked, it will not send every single spam comment blocked. Hey, one thousand new email on your mailbox is so fuck. To combat this, I decided to use the Math Comment Spam Protection. So, do the math before you can comment on my blog.
Now you’ve read this. Do me a favour by leaving a comment, of course without any spam words like poker, viagra or MILF sex. If you get 403 Error, or the comment doesn’t get through, leave a message in the shoutbox, or email me at geminigeek [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks 
Updates: It seems like I forgot to rename back a core file in wordpress, making people unable to comment in my blog. No wonder my blog has been quiet lately. Now everything is properly renamed, I wonder whether the spam will come back or not…
Popularity: 4% [?]
December 16th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Testing leaving a comment. Logged in user like me shouldn’t have any problem
December 16th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Testing… I think my comment shouldn’t be any problem, as admin and logged in user
December 19th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
testing? wee…
December 20th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
you still using the renaming WordPress core file method to solve the problem? coz i prefer solution without touching any WordPress file
btw, last time i used captcha to solve the spam problems, but then the captcha block ping/trackbak as well, so i removed the captcha, beside, some ppl are too stupid (i dunno how to describe them) to even type the catcha numbers into the input box, and say my comment got problems… o_0
December 21st, 2006 at 12:03 am
Nop. I renamed back to wordpress default. I have to rename the file to other name because the spambot just keep sending spam in split seconds, non-stop, similar to DOS attacks. That’s why my whole site slows down, and I have the rename them so that it returns 404 to the spambot, and they will stop spamming, temporary. That’s when I search for other anti-spam plugin, other than SK2 and Akismet.
December 22nd, 2006 at 1:12 am
I use Challenge plugin to combat comment spam and Trackback Validator to combat trackback spams. These combination is so cool that not even a single spam manage to pass through my blog. Good luck.
January 5th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I use spam karma and so far, it seems to be sufficient to handle spams. Will be thinking of using the math plugin if thing gets worse.