Blocking too many customers

The check box may be broken. I an checking this. I haven’t received any email notifications since the last update.

For now, you need to check regularly.

It helps to know why the people were being blocked and that should be in the reason code in the white list requests. I can help tweaking the settings to keep this from happening. You can also post the question here, but make sure you change any email addresses for privacy.

Keith

I can confirm this. Had few people asking to be whitelisted and they were inf act authors on my websites, so it is very nasty when my authors who publish posts get blacklisted.

And to be honest i m afraid that everyone is blacklisted. Can someone confirm that not everyone is blacklisted? Because if everyone is blacklisted then this plugin is dangerous to your website.

Anyway i m suspicious that everyone is blacklisted because on all my websites i use stop spammers with same settings and i did not have a single comment post…

You can look at the Spammer History page and see what is happening. It will show the latest blocked attempts with a reason for the block. If all comments are blocked for the same reason, it could be that your website configuration is making everyone look like a spammer. It could be that there is conflict with another plugin.

Keith

I’ve been experiencing the same thing recently. I’ve had several legitimate users get blocked and can’t figure out why. Most recent one was via their WordPress site.

The reason was bad cached IP and the script was /wp-comments-post.php?for=jetpack

There is an option to turn on logging. Turn it on for a while, then you can search the log for the original cause of the block.

Keith

I’ve had the same problem. I get a constant stream of spam registrations (many from .ru). I installed Stop Spammers and bingo! it stopped them all dead. Sadly it stopped most of my legitimate commenters too and I eventually realised the blog had fell very silent.

I also noticed a load of people asking to be whitelisted, some had left angry comments. I think it’s fair to assume that for every request to be whitelisted there is likely to be others who just didn’t bother and left very unhappy.

I disabled Stop Spammers and now I get comments again. The spam registrations are back but at least they never post any comments thanks to Akismet.

I accept that when dealing with spammers there will always be some collateral damage but having spam registrations is better than killing interaction with your users. Seems way to aggressive.

@washerhelp
The latest plugin version may fix most of your problems – as kpgraham posted elsewhere something changed at Akismet causing a lot of hassles for Stop Spammers users.

Something I found very successful to stop spam bots – remove the “homepage” URL field (there’s a plugin) – my spambot submissions have gone from 30 to 100 a day to 0 since doing that. Genuine posters can still post links in the comment.

And Stop Spammers get’s rid of the nearly all of the rest of the spammers

Thanks mike. I’ve just removed the web site url box on the comment form (if that’s what you meant)

@washerhelp
Yes, that’s what I did.

I’m having the same issue on a massive scale. Normally I just add the person to the whitelist but now, when I click the link to add them, the page reloads but they are still there and not added.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thank you,
Jeremy

inthemix,

I am working on your problem.

There was an issue in the last version where a spammer could include javascript in a white list request. So far the only effect was to confuse the page so that it did not display correctly. The javascript assumed it was on a comment moderation page so it didn’t work. I hope that everyone upgrades to 5.8 before the spammers figure it out.

Please make sure that you have the 5.8 version and clear out the white list requests.

There have been strange problems with adding to the white list. My websites always work fine, but there are too many people asking about it for it to be imaginary. I am going to rewrite the whole section and hope it goes away.

Keith

Thanks Keith!

Just for clarity… you want me to update to 5.8 and then clear the current list? Will this allow me to add them once they request again or am I still waiting on a fix?

Thank you
Jeremy

mikeotgaar and washerhelp,

I removed the URL field on one of my websites a few years ago, and it did nothing. The bots hit the page and get the “nonce” data and then submit data. They don’t actually fill in the form. The form POST data is sent directly from the bot, including the URL field, even if it is not present on your page.

Unless your plugin rejects comments where the URL field IS present in the post when it is not on the page, it will not stop the spammers. I think a plugin to rename all the comment fields and rejects anyone who uses the old field names might be effective.

Keith

inthemix,

There are two lists. On the History page are the caches. There is a good cache and and a bad cache list. These can be cleared. On the settings page there is a white list and a black list.

In the past there has been some confusion. When you add to the white list, it is the list on the settings page, but people expect the ip to appear on the good cache list.

The caches clear themselves now. After a few hours the caches should empty out and new spammers will be appear. The white and black lists on the settings page are permanent. You can edit them but they will not clear out over time.

You no longer have to clear the cache, unless you need do to something immediately. Clear the cache if there is a particularly active spammer or a user has been blocked and you need to give them another shot.

Keith

I can confirm that removing the website field for comments has not affected the amount of spam registrations. I’ve had over a dozen this morning. The majority of them are from Outlook, Hotmail, and .ru Addresses.

However, I’m still really glad I did it because it’s ridiculous how many people believe they are obliged to fill it in and enter complete gobbledygook, which then gets picked up as a broken link by my broken links plug-in.