Thursday, January 19, 2006

The Return of the Dreaded Spam



Lately my blog seems to having a surge of popularity...with spammers! While I'm sure a few of my readers would like larger genitals or to help the Royal Family of Ugandazu regain their long-lost family fortune, I'm finding each time I log on, I have a new wave of spam to delete and it's taking up way too much of my time.

If I block the IP address (I use Movable Type), sure enough, a few hours later, there's a new batch from someone else. I am going to try turning off the comments for my old posts...any other tips?



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing you can try if using Movable Type is to change the name of your comment script.

Spammers target the default name just by searching for mt-comments.cgi and hitting it. You'll need to change the comment script name in the configuration file (mt.cfg) as well as the actual file.

See my instructions on how to do it for more detail:

Sheri said...

Since I upgraded to MT 3.2, the comment spam has become virtually invisible. I usually scan through the list once a week or so to be sure no real comments got marked as spam. It does happen occasionally.

I also have my blog set to automatically publish comments from trusted TypeKey users, and I moderate the rest.

I also like the idea of re-naming mt-comments.cgi. Paul - is this compatible with the latest version of MT?

Anonymous said...

Sheri, good question, I have no idea, I haven't upgraded since 3.12something.

It looks like it's still done the same way, but I'm not sure.

David said...

When I upgraded to MT3.2, all the spam stopped for a few weeks, then BAM! I ended up closing off older comments (which Meg, of TooManyChefs does, since that seems to be what they target. It took me about an hour or so, but I haven't had any spam since.