Are You Being Attacked By Spam?

By jeffcSpam

Back in July, I informed you what I believe to be the best comment/Akismet configuration in WordPress. This is the configuration I use on my own WordPress powered blog but for the past two nights I’ve checked my email after work, I’ve noticed that my blog had been slammed by spam bots. I’m used to seeing something being advertised in these comments but this time, these comments appear to be garbage text. Check out the screenshot to see what I mean.

Typically, with my configuration, I’ll see 4 or 5 spam comments in my moderation queue as most of the other spam comments are made on posts older than three months. With these however, all of the posts which have been spammed have been within that three month time span and the content of the comments have no rhyme or reason. Seems like a giant waste of time and or money.

Anyone else experiencing this type of behaviour?

12 thoughts on “Are You Being Attacked By Spam?”

  3. These spam are killing me actually. I get a few everyday and the sad part is that Akismet doesn’t catch them. Every day, I have to go and delete them (actually mark them as spam) from my live comments list.

  4. Hey Leland, glad to hear I’m not the only one. You and I are in the same boat in terms of not having a clue as to the motivation behind these types of comments. It is as if a human being with tons of time on their hands smashed the keyboard with their fingers on my recent posts.

  5. I too have been getting similar comments, even with Akismet installed. I don’t even understand what the motivation is behind the people (or bots) behind these gibberish comments. As far as I know they don’t link to any real site, and I’m sure their “approval ratio” isn’t that great.

  6. Is there a wp plugin not to dis-similar to the (Math Plugin) named above, but without the theme tweaking? I’m always afraid to mess with code.

    For some reason, i have rec’d an increase in spam. Not sure why. And it isn’t trackback spam, but comment spam. I have several blogs, and this is a major pain.

  7. Sounds like a pretty good solution you have implemented. I’ve never really had a problem with spam which is why this is a weird occurrence for me to be bombarded like this.

  8. Boy, I hate those comments. I also hate the ones where it says this is a great article, I’ll bookmark this and the comment authors name is an advertisement for something.

  9. That’s strange, because you seem to use a math comment protection plugin already, which would have been my first suggestion to get rid of the spam. Seems obvious that those spammers implemented a function to calculate your math question.

    But maybe it will help some others: I had similar spam problems but completely got rid of it by installing Math Comment Spam Protection. It requires users to calculate a little math question like 7 + 5 for their comment to become submitted. A couple of lines template hacking is necessary but it is absolutely worth the effort. To additionally counter trackback spam there is that useful Simple Trackback Validation plugin. Both of them work with WordPress 2.6.1. In combination with Akismet I’m completely done with spam.

  10. I am also experience surge of spam lately. Which is pain because I am not using any plugins to fight it so far.

    Luckily most of it comes with same mail addresses so I just blacklisted them. I wish someone made a plugin that simply blacklists emails (or other fields) from spammed comments… I actually found one but very outdated.

  11. Just two days back, I experienced the same problem with mine…. Got hit by more number of spams and about 12 spams made their way into my moderation queue… I marked all of them spam rather than simple deletion. Few of them just included the text

    Hi, Webmaster

  12. Hi Jeff,

    Concratulations for your blog!, is one of my favorites! Today I was reading your article and I have exclacly the same problem. I used to have 2-3 spam messages and now I’ve got more than 80 everyday. I’m a bit anoyed with this and I’m looking for a plug in to solve the problem. If you know any please let me know.
    Please check my blog if you want to see my article about yours 😉

    http://posicionate.org

    Regards,

    Sofia

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