Spam experiment: FYI

  • I continue to be puzzled by spam and it’s origins. Not that i really care all that much, but i do want it to stop getting through my filters.

    I performed a wee experiment 30 days ago. Essentially all i did was alter my website’s address in my profile here slightly. And to date, the onslaught of spam messages has ceased completely. I mean, nothing. No spam at all. I found that to be very interesting.

    Thought you’d want to know.

    F.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

  • That’s why I never got any spam. Good finding.

    I modified my profile too, after reading this…… now lets see what happens

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    I ran a similar experiment a while back. When I was running Spam Karma, I also displayed SK’s automated message, “Attention Spammers: Spam Karma has eaten x amount of spam comments.” And, I was being flooded with comment and trackback spam. As soon as I removed the automated message, the spam flood turned into a tiny trickle.

    I suppose that those who program the bots are being highly selective in their tests now. For example, in order to test their bots against WordPress, they spider through these forums to get a maximum exposure to WordPress blogs. And, in order to test their bots again Spam Karma, they scour the web looking for blogs that display Spam Karma’s “Attention Spammers” message.

    Thread Starter dss

    (@dss)

    during the third wave of really overwhelming spam (when we were at 1.3 b i think) i removed my WordPress credit, and my kubrick credits for 30 days, and my spam went away then too. When i added it back, because i felt obliged to do so, the spam came back.

    This experiment took about two or three days to kick in, and then the spam stopped. 27 days 100% spam comment/trackback spam free.

    (now i know it’s gonna come flowing back in because i reported this…)

    One thing is that because i am so interested in WordPress and want to help wherever i can (both here and on my site) I questioned the change in my profile. I felt that to one degree or another it made me just one step less accessible to other users, members, and folks needing support in an area i might be able to assist with.

    But if you look, it’s a minor change that (i hope) people can figure out easily. But you never know…

    @macmanx That is a very interesting observation. Not only they do not do anything to deter spammers (because spammers never read the web pages, their bot does) they actually act as spam-attractors!

    No wonder Spam Karma users can so proudly display so many spam eaten messages whereas nowadays I feel deserted by spammers ;(

    All this while I was wondering how come my blog users are rapidly increasing but spam seems to have gone almost to zero!

    I have used bad-behavior since release, backed up with Spam-Karma2. Not only do I get no spam, the server has a much lighter load which can only keep my hosts happy.

    I totally recommend both programs.

    Make sure you’re keeping Bad Behavior up to date. It’s new, and development is still very active.

    I still run SK2 as a backup, but BB gets the vast majority of spam. Once in a while I’ll have a manual spammer get through, but they’re quickly blacklisted.

    I heard good things about Bad Behavior too.
    @podz Why do you need to use both? Shouldn’t one be good enough as they effectively address the same problem space?

    I use very successfully HashCash & Referrer Bouncer plugins. I am 100% spam free in my blogs.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    In my case, Bad Behavior catches most of the spam, and my moderation list catches the one or two that make it through every month.

    Podz, however, is a well-known WP user. As such, and as is the topic of this thread, he may be targeted by more spambot programmers and spam test bots. If that is the case, he probably does need to run both BB and SK.

    BTW, using CG-Referrer, I’ve had some real insights into the spammers and what they are doing. They continue to attempt referrer spam (oddly) and I need to add a new ‘graylisting’ feature to catch the jerks. I may also move to an htaccess based keyword/site nuker, in order to try and truly lighten the server load. But, I prefer taking the minimal ‘hit’ for tracking what people are trying to do to my site. ??

    The few times the spammers have made it through CG-Referrer, they would have been stopped by either:
    1. auto graylisting (which I think referrer-karma does) or
    2. having my own CG-AntiSpam running on CHAITGEAR (which I have sorta running as chunks of independent code and tests), as the username fields were obvious spam, as were the URLs listed — both of which are easy checks and rejects.

    Since I have moderation on, and low commentary, it’s easy to track right now. But in the long run, I’m planning to move to either registered-only or a BB system for all discussion/commentary… Just easier.

    -d

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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