What's beyond comment spam?

Posted by unbrand on 2 February 2005 | 3 Comments

You know, I have to tip my hat to the spammers. These asshats started figuring out that comments were being locked down on blogs, so what’s next? Trackback! I got swarmed today with dozens of trackback spams. About the only thing I could do was disable trackbacks and pingbacks by executing the following SQL:

update wp_posts set ping_status = 'closed';

So how far away is this from just posting some plaintext as .html? Well, comments are still good, but no trackbacks/pingbacks seriously cuts into the power of blogs. Ouch.

The author of Wordpress, Matt, has some good comments about the issue.

Update: The Register has a good interview with a real-life blog comment spammer. He lives in England and makes 7 figures.

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Comments

  • <p>Thanks for the tip, Glutnix. Although there was one site I posted a comment on the other day (sometimes prepositions just get in the fucking way), and the spam karma filter blocked my post. It was totally innocuous and had no bad words in it, so that kind of put me off a bit. Right now, things are cool since I&rsquo;ve upgraded to <span class='caps'>WP 1</span>.5, but if the spam comments come back in waves, I&rsquo;ll check out spam karma. I have heard good things about it from others, too.</p>

    Posted by unbrand, 01/07/2007 11:39am (3 years ago)

  • <p>You should try the Spam Karma <span class='caps'>WP1</span>.5 plugin. It has definetely cut down the amount of comment spam on both Webfroot and inner.geek.</p>

    Posted by Glutnix, 01/07/2007 11:39am (3 years ago)

  • <p>Yep, that&rsquo;s a serious functionality cut. I think the best bet right now is for <a href='http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html' rel='nofollow' rel="nofollow">Google&rsquo;s &ldquo;nofollow&rdquo; attribute initiative</a> to kick in- but how long will <strong>that</strong> be effective before those bastard spammers find yet another way? Sigh.</p>

    Posted by sibylle, 01/07/2007 11:39am (3 years ago)

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