Friday, February 22, 2008

"Smarter" Spammers Using http in Comment Name

I've noticed recently a large amount of spam coming from "smarter" spammers - they've now taken to doing two things:

- Using a URL as the Commenter's name (http://ww.sitename.com and re-inserting it into the website field)
- Leaving an "innocent" comment like "Great site." with no URLs so the spam isn't triggered

This type of comment was getting published directly onto my blog (Wordpress) since I do not have moderation on all comments. I have routed their efforts by turning on moderation anytime "http" is in the comment content, name, etc. This of course also will moderate a real comment with a link in it, but it's a temporary solution.

Hopefully Akismet will smarten up soon, but I imagine other blogs will have this same problem?

This Post was written by Sara from Ms. Adventures in Italy

2 comments:

Sara, Ms Adventures in Italy said...

PS:Instead of using "http", I have used "site" as the moderation word seeing as they aren't very imaginative and all comments are like "Nice site" etc...

ejm said...

I am a big fan of Spam Karma and have it installed on my wordpress blog. It has caught these latest "nice site" spams and relegated them to the place they belong.

There are also other wordpress plug-ins available to moderate spam. A word of caution: I would stay away from "Bad Behaviour" (ha. appropriately named?). I had it installed at one point and it caused all sorts of problems.