Spam-B-Gone
We’ll just have to see how this works… I just dropped Spam Karma 2.0 into my WordPress install. The blasted comment spammers were getting more and more aggressive. I like getting email, but not when it’s 50 comment-post notifications. Installation couldn’t have been easier, but I do feel like I’m working without a net, as I’m using an older version of MySQL than is recommended.
Wish me luck!
October 26th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
How does it work? Even SK’s own site does not explain what it does to prevent spam!
October 26th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
It’s mys-teeer-ious!
Actually, I barely read the documentation. I pretty much just dropped it in and enabled it, ignoring the warning about my old version of MySQL. What can I say, I like to play with fire. shrug
Basically, SK2 passes the comment and its attributes through a series of tests and assigns the comment a score based on the results of each test. For example, there’s an encrypted JavaScript payload that gets passed back to the comment handler by the browser. If the payload’s missing (or the browser isn’t JavaScript capable), the score’s incremented (or decremented; they seem to preface everything with a minus sign…). The number of links included is a factor, as well as the presence of certain black-listed linked domains.
Wow, I just looked through the above-linked page and also their wiki and failed to find any information on how it actually works. Creepy. Well, so far it seems to be working ok. I got an emailed report from it this morning showing it had blocked 17 spamments. Of course, I probably took as long digesting that report as it would have taken me to just flag all 17 as spam, but that’s not the point.
The creator of WordPress just released a new service also designed to prevent spam from actually making it onto the post’s page. I might look more into it, but for now, I’m a data point saying that SK2, despite an obvious lack of documentation, Just Works, and that’s fine for me for now!
October 26th, 2005 at 12:49 pm
Ah so it works like SpamAssasin.
Do you know I’ve never received a single spam post ever?
I guess those bots are still trying to figure out what color is green.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
That’s probably all you need, this is just a smarter (and vastly more complex) version.
What do you think of the embedded Google map? Yay toys!
My next trick will be to overlay the tracklog of a given drive…
November 1st, 2005 at 5:50 pm
Good luck (and it seems well done!). I haven’t had any spam problems since I closed comments for any ‘article’ older than a couple of weeks. I think they only try the low numbered articles, or at least it seems that way with my sites. Hangin’s too good for ‘em!
November 1st, 2005 at 6:36 pm
Ain’t that the truth!
November 10th, 2005 at 1:37 am
I’ve had good luck against spammers on dbmini since I implemented some solid .htaccess rules for archives (bots don’t like words as well as numbers) and found a descent plug-in for trackback spam and a pretty descent referrer bouncer too. I had a bad month last (much like you did), but it’s all but stopped since.
Also, next time you get a spam notification, notice that it comes from your email address you specified in your WP setup. You can always build a rule in your email program to move those someplace better, like the trash. Just watch for the ones you need to let through!
December 16th, 2006 at 9:48 am
Someone else below asked this already about antispam scripts.
I am getting nailed with Spam on my website mails and in our blog website – now its offline too
much spam. Is there anyway to stop this? If not, there really isn’t any point in leaving it up
and active. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for help, Keep up the good work. Greetings from Poland