My Spam Fun

I opted for a blog here on wp dot com in order to get rest from the spammers … not to have to do constant monitoring, changes to blacklists, etc.

I am one who doesn’t get many legit comments on my blogs, so the amount of spam I was getting was overwhelming, considering the lack of comments I generally do get. I get a few a week, sometimes none, sometimes more, legit comments that is. So I installed FLOCK and got an account here, this blog and then installed the Akismet plugin on my other blogs.

One blog I had was getting hit constantly before, then that all slowed down to nothing for a few days, but as that timing was nice for that blog, it wasn’t for another. I had a few spam comments hit off and on for the week before on this other blog, and then when they stopped for a day or two at the first blog, they started up full force on the other blog.

–That is when I decided to get more seriously mad at the whole affair and look for a better plugin, which is exactly when I found this whole wp dot com Akismet stuff. October 27, 2005.

I installed Akismet on my four standalone wp blogs. I deactivated WP-Hashcash, Bad-Behavior, a few setting in CG-referrer I had for bouncing baddies, and whatever else I had lying around spam fighting-wise.

The one behaviour I like about Akismet is, it took a look at the comments database and tagged and deleted all the spam from before. Finally, it’s gone. Voila, good riddance! I was awaiting some spam plugin to do just that, use the data and then get rid of it.

So my little blog that was getting hit with spam then suddenly was getting more and more, one every several minutes round the clock. It’s now Sunday, October 30, 2005. On Saturday the 28th the spam comments got thinner … not as many, chunks of time with no spam, then one or two or three streched out over an hour or so, then chunk of emptyness, and so on, until 1:08am Sunday, that was the very last spam comment I got. That means a grand total of 406 Akismet Caught spam comments since install. Two spammers got through to moderation, just normal spammer things like the others. For whatever reason they slipped through from being tagged as SPAM. But no matter, two instead of 400 is quite alright with me.

The thing about this spam attack on me is that I don’t see how the comments are being sent … there is nothing in my CG-Referrer logs.

I look at my hosting logs and can see nothing particularly insightful to this either. So mythically it came in and went out. I expect it to come back again, it does, after the first time they always come back.

This blog particularly used to be on another host, same url name nearly, but a different “.” domain. When I switched hosts I changed where I had this blog installed, and put it at root. On the old host I had a lot of spam being combatted. When I switched the spammers didn’t have me for a long time, then when they found me again they piddled with me, until this recent swath of crud this week.

My other blog that I wrote about first in this post, it never got spam until after I moved to my new host. It was on the old host same as it is on the new host. For that last several months most of the spam I’ve gotten has been there, with none at all since October 23, 2005.

I had, as noted above, deactivated WP-Hashcash and other spam fighting tools when I installed Akismet the other day. Since I was getting so many more that usual where I had gotten only a few previously, I activated WP-Hashcash again. It didn’t change anything, but I have had two legit comments come in just fine since then.

My objective is to get my blogs happy and spam free, referrer spammers begone from clogging up my bandwidth, etc. Akismet does get rid of the spam without much intervention from me. For that I’m thankful. I do wish to have a referrer bouncy thing that I know works though. I have tried a few different ones and find that most of the things I have seen taking up bandwidth that I wish wouldn’t are things going repeatedly after wp-commentsrss2.php and they don’t show as being bounced (with the plugins that do log info for you.)

It’s primary that I see that the spam doesn’t come constantly, only in fits and starts more sometimes, less other times, none some of the time. It goes away after awhile, then comes back reinvented. We have to live with this crud in some shape or form, it’s there online, behind computer terminals or inside boxes that have been told what to do. The world is cruddy and moldy in places that get no sunshine. It’s too bad the sunshine dwellers have to have the moldy creepy stuff attacking, but leastwise it’s combatable moreso from a bothersomeness standpoint, with Akismet. 🙂