The Death of Akismet (WordPress Spam Prevention Plugin)?May 28th, 2006 Akismet is a spam prevention plugin from the WordPress author, Matt Mullenweg. It uses collective wisdom in filtering spams.
Simple tip for trackback spam prevention on WordPress BlogsFebruary 4th, 2005 A very simple trick for clueless trackback spammers attacking WordPress Blogs. Delete your first post (id 0).
Comment Guard Pro (WordPress Comment Spam Protection Plugin) Released for Internal TestingNovember 30th, 2007 I like to say that Comment Guard Pro will be the final plugin you will ever need for WordPress comment spam protection. It contains 18 pluglets for protecting you from comment spam, an open API for you to write your own pluglets, detailed live statistics (AJAX updated) and more.
On Comment Guard - WordPress Comment Spam Prevention PluginJanuary 18th, 2007 Yesterday I talked about developing a comment spam prevention plugin with zero false positives. I am currently using it on all of our blogs.
1/2 Million+ Spam Comments Blocked By Comment Guard Pro; Zero False PositiveSeptember 28th, 2007 508903 spam comments were blocked by Angsuman's Comment Guard plugin in 253 days 21 hours 54 minutes. 99.503% of the comments received during this time were spam.
Comment Guard Pro Beta 0.3 ReleasedFebruary 22nd, 2007 Comment Guard 0.3 Beta is a bug fix release. Very occassionally the plugin would request a valid commenter to submit his comment again.
Error of Spam Protection by Restricting Comments on Old PostsDecember 7th, 2007 There is a widespread assumption by many bloggers that comments on old posts are mostly spam. There are several WordPress plugins to prevent commenting on old posts, even posts as recent as one month old like, for example, Akismet.
Abusing Comment Name field for SEO.. No SirSeptember 9th, 2007 Sometimes I see comments where the name of the person is not really his name but a popular keyword which obviously links to his website. While I understand the need to have link-love for useful comments and even encourage it, the name field shouldn't be abused by using keywords like "Web Banner Design", for example.
Recipe for a comment spam free site for WordPress UsersDecember 24th, 2004 My recipe for getting rid of comment spam once and for all:
Install WordPress 1.2.1 or later. Install ImageAuth hack
Go to Options Tab.
WordPress Comment Spam Protection: Comment Guard Plugin Beta ReleaseFebruary 2nd, 2007 Update: Comment Guard pro has been released. Please check the features here.
How to keep your WordPress 1.5 Blog Spam FreeMay 5th, 2005 Comment Spam, Trackback Spam, Pingback Spam and Referrer Spam are ever increasing problems with blogs. After moving my blog over to WordPress 1.5, I revisited my Spam prevention strategy.
Comment Guard Plugin Updated with New FeaturesAugust 29th, 2007 We have the Comment Guard plugin on all of our blogs with the latest version. Comment Guard is our fool-proof solution to eliminate comment spam from automated bots, which constitute over 90% of comments.
Comment Guard Pro (WordPress Comment Spam Protection Software) ReleasedMarch 3rd, 2008 I am very happy to announce the much-awaited release of Comment Guard Pro for WordPress blogs. Comment Guard Pro is designed to unobtrusively protect your blog against all types of comment spams - trackback spam, pingback spam, robotic spam using comment form, human submitted spam (where the spammers actually goes to your site to spam you; they are the hardest to detect), referrer spam etc.
Meta-Review of WordPress Matt's Automattic(sic) Spam StopperOctober 31st, 2005 Matt, author of WordPress blogging software, has released an anti-spam plugin for WordPress - Automattic Spam Stopper (now renamed as AKismet)
Bad Behavior, a competing rather effective comment spam prevention plugin, author nicknamed IOError posted a review which points out some obvious downsides of such centralized spam filtering mechanisms like:
1. Privacy concern - all your comments are send to Matt's server for human inspection
2.
New horizons in spamming aka SpamBlog ( Rick H needs to be cloned? )February 12th, 2005 I accidentally stumbled upon a site ( spam-guard[dot]blogspot[dot]com ) which exists for the sole purpose of spamming. It is a spam blog or splog!
For sometime spammers have targeted blogs, first through comment spam and now increasingly through trackback spam.
After being thoroughly fed-up with the state of WordPress comment spam protection, I have decided to solve the comment spam problem in WordPress blogs once and for all. I have installed an experimental commenting system which is designed to completely stop (read 100%) robotic spam (spam generated by bots and not humans) in all my blogs and with no (read 0%) false positives. I have used all my blogs for beta testing of the system. Between all of them I receive several thousand spams daily which woud be an ideal proving ground for the plugin. I will be fine-tuning this plugin over the weeks with the basic premise of triggering 0% false positives (or "do no harm" doctrine). So far the results have been very positive with early volunteers like Anaconda theme blog:
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January 17th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Hi,
Any insight on how the comment blocks out spam completely? Does this include trackbacks as well?
Also, is there a way to check if there is a false positive?
Any release date planned?
January 18th, 2007 at 6:32 am
> Does this include trackbacks as well?
Yes, it does.
> Also, is there a way to check if there is a false positive?
One simple way is to have a feedback form for users to let you know if they faced any problems commenting. The technology has been designed to make it virtually impossible to trigger false positives.
> Any release date planned?
I plan to test it on our blogs for few weeks and with any beta testers to iron out the kinks, if any. So far I am very excited at its uncanny accuracy.
BTW: It works fine in conjunction with other spam prevention techniques like Akismet too.
I am somewhat hesitant in discussing the technical details in a public blog because fighting spammers is game which both sides can play. While we can observe spam bots and create technologies to stop them cold, they too can learn from available code and discussions and adapt they engines. In such a game (or fight) every bit of help counts, even “security by obscurity”
Already my MySQL server load has started to come down.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Sounds good. Makes sense that you don’t discuss the technical details at all.
Posted a comment in your new post today about it being free / paid.
Btw, if you need a beta tester count me in. I’ve got SK2 on all my blogs, so you can see if your plugin plays along with that as well.
January 18th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Thanks for the offer to beta test it. I have included you in the list.
> being free / paid.
I haven’t decided yet. I will decide it based on the amount of effort we put in. Most of my plugins are free. At this stage of development I can release it for free, however with source code obscured to hinder spammers. However if I decide to include more capabilities to provide more comprehensive coverage from live human spammers, then I may charge a nominal fee.
It is designed to be the very first, and hopefully only required, line of defense, without requiring any database queries. The only query we use so far is to save the statistics. So it not just stops spams but also saves several SQL queries that are required for a normal comment processing.
January 19th, 2007 at 12:03 am
That is great… if you’re not touching the DB it is perfect
Let me know when you want me to begin testing.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I’m happy to hear that there will be another spam comment plugin since I’ve been noticing a big spike in spam comments (they’re getting smarter now with 1 link or even no link except the spam link in their homepage) but I’m getting a few hundred already in a span of hours when I used to have that amount in days. Grrr. Waiting and hoping that it will be released soon.
Thanks for making the plugins!
June 25th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Thanks for sharing the information. Lots and lots of stuffs are very useful for me. Keep writing. Thanks again