A lifelog of a well-travelled single parent who had a life extension in 2000, blogs indiscriminately about her journey through life fulfilling unfinished business and promises that will soon complete her existence...

::Tired of Spammers?

Friday, October 15, 2004

This blog was spammed couple of times today but, thanks to Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist, deleting spammers' comments had been easier.

Fortunately, while browsing through BlogExplosion this evening, I came across a blog that pointed out to defeat automatic comment spam bots by allowing commenters to 'preview' their comment before comment submissions.

I removed these post tags from Individual Entry Archive and Comment Listing Template, as instructed by E!, author of Monkey Diaries, in his blog:

< input style="font-weight: bold;" type="submit" name="post" value="Post" / >

hopefully, I will get some rest from those annoying spammers.


Posted on October 15, 2004 11:50 PM


butterfly Let me know you were here, your thoughts are welcome!

To respond to an earlier comment, the reason spammers spam is to push up their googlerank.

If there are lots of links to their sites, then their googlerank is higher.

In my case, not a single spam has got through (and that is not a challenge either), but still they try. The first guy to spam me was a bigtime amazon associate. Amazon were interested to hear of this.

(I'm at http://www.murky.org/ )

Although spammers have found how to post, they keep trying as they don't bother to check if they're working - it's more hassle for them than it is to just keep battering at the door.

I've locked out certain IP addresses at server level (so MT-Blacklist never even sees the spam, and the spammer gets a 403 message (forbidden) )

I had a spammer attack today, he tried lots of different URLs and lots of different linked pages, presumably trying to see if there was a weak spot. Not one succeeded. Probably something to do with my only approving automatically people who use typekey - and only then when they've proved themselves. Everyone else, spammer or no, goes to moderation. Fortunately my site is so unpopular that this is viable!

The reason why a 'captcha' is a bad idea is as it locks out people who can't use graphics (e.g. the blind with screenreaders).


Posted by: Murk on October 23, 2004 10:35 PM

The problem with mt and comment spammers is that the URL is which the comments post to is predictable -- once you know it for one site you pretty much know it for a majority of sites. There is nothing in the system to say "only accept comments if they originate from this URL" so even if you force your readers to preview it will not stop the comment spammers


Posted by: minorthird on October 17, 2004 08:43 PM

I guess I've been luck. Only one or two these past couple of months. And no people, this isn't a challenge to test my security!


Posted by: Elegant John on October 17, 2004 10:04 AM

Afonso, I got spammed this morning even I removed direct posting...

I do not know why people should spam others with their stuffs...


Posted by: Laila* on October 16, 2004 10:14 PM

Hello, Dariana, welcome to my blog and thank you for your concern.

I have corrected the Hot Link Protection with my server and hopefully, my banner will work now.

I appreciate it... really!


Posted by: Laila* on October 16, 2004 10:13 PM

Just so you know, your banner is not showing up in BlogExplosion. You might want to check your hosting site. Nice blog design.


Posted by: Dariana on October 16, 2004 06:33 PM

That's a nice trick Laila.
But why not using a captcha or code, everytime someone comments?


Posted by: Afonso on October 16, 2004 01:36 PM

That's a nice trick Laila.
But why not using a captcha or code, everytime someone comments?


Posted by: Afonso on October 16, 2004 01:35 PM


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