___/ On Thu 25 May 2006 22:34:41 BST, [ Brian Layman ] wrote : \___
Of the filters/actions that do fire off only when a comment is
submitted to wp-comments-post.php, it's the first
Yeah, I've wondered about that... Can you imagine the reduced load the
Akismet servers would experience if the blocked words filter came first.
Suddenly Akismet wouldn't have to deal with any comments containing the
words Poker, Casino, Texas or Holdem. I think that just might make a
dent...
A temporary one for sure. It is a cat-and-mouse game. Set up a non-unique
filter and all defences will perish.
Gambling spammers can get the links even without the hyphenated domains
(which Matt Cutts recently said would lose advantage), or the anchor text
in the link.
My wife's blog has blocked 40,000 spams, which I suspect is probably pretty
low compared to most of you. If I take out my .htaccess blocking stuff,
that spam rate ramps up very quickly. I suspect a majority of these spams
were poker related and given the number of WP blogs out there, that must add
up.
Seems like the .htaccess method, which I first read about in Dvorak <
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=2904 >, is still rather successful. Once
popularised, however, it can be fooled (just like my CAPTCHA which got
hacked, allowing a flow of 200+ spam in the past 24 hours alone).
The spammers are apparently using compromised Windows boxes to carry out
the floods. Such Windows vulnerabilities and zombie armies also account
for 80% of the global E-mail spam, according to Symantec. So there is
/one/ root of the problem. UIP diversity could be fought by
fixing/replacing the operating system. But I'll digress...
One thing that I am shocked about is that my personal blog, which I setup on
February 28, has received a grand total of 14 spam comments in three months.
Is it simply the fact that I've had Akismet on since the beginning? I'm
certainly known to the search engines... Somebody pointed out that my post
on 1and1 and PEAR was Google's #1 listing within the first 24 hours. And if
I was found by several spammers, surely I would be found by more. Now, I'm
not complaining, but I am surprised I don't get more comment spam...
I would happily pass my spam over to you, in case you feel left out.
*smile*
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Here be hills, there be dragons!
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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