Comments on: Combatting WordPress Trackback Spam

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:13:06 +0000

Richard,

when you say you have gotten a few emails, do you mean that you are getting mails telling you that there are trackbacks in the moderation queue? Is so, that is no problem, simply delete them.

If you are still confused, I wrote a follow-up post to this one which has more info on trackback spam read it and if you are still unsure, feel free to comment again or contact me directly.

By: Richard Bronosky

Richard Bronosky — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 22:19:37 +0000

I’m a little confused about Trackback spam problem. I installed Authimage after I got tired of cleaning out my comment moderation queue. Since, I haven’t gotten a single spam. But now I’ve gotten a few emails about trackbacks from the same jerk. But I don’t see that those appear anywhere on my blog. Not in the comments, of even embedded in the HTML source as meta tags or something. So, what is the problem? I’m missing the whole point. Did I disable all trackbacks accidently? I don’t know how to do a trackback, so I can’t test it. But I have had a few track backs to these post on my blog here and here. Tell me if I’m missing something.

Oh, I did find the quotes from those trackbacks in my moderation queue. So it looks like the filtering in my “Options>Discussion” are working on trackbacks too. I use WordPress 1.2.2

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 15:08:01 +0000

Antonio,

I agree with you completely, unfortunately!

In English, we would say it is a constant game of leap-frog.

Thanks for stopping by,

Tom

By: reparacion ordenadores

reparacion ordenadores — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 11:42:50 +0000

Three rules for the spam game:

1) you can not win.
2) you can not draw.
3) you can not leave the play.

Greetings,

Antonio, from Malaga (Spain)

By: Tom Raftery’s I.T. ramblings » Trackback spam explained

Tom Raftery’s I.T. ramblings » Trackback spam explained — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 12:08:27 +0000

[...] ogging& Comment Spam10 Feb 2005 01:07 pm
Trackback spam explained

I posted about Trackback Spam previously but it was brought to my attention that I didn̵ [...]

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 19:56:21 +0000

Interesting Niall - I’d be interested to hear how you get on with it. I have reservations about it because I feel it will leave comments through into the moderation queue - and I will have to go through these manually deleting them. The beauty of AuthImage, for me, is that the spam comments never make it to the moderation queue.

And I’m on WordPress 1.2.2 not 1.5 beta.

Let me know how it goes for you.

By: Niall Sheridan

Niall Sheridan — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 19:42:52 +0000

I’ve just switched over to using Kitten’s spaminator and have disabled authimage entirely.
It works by scoring comments - if it hits the threshold, the comment is discarded. It does work better with WP 1.5 (beta).

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 10:41:53 +0000

Cindy, thanks for the comment.

One point to note, the RewriteRule in your code should only be used where it is the last line in the .htaccess file because of the inclusion of the L in the square brackets (the L is the code for Last rule).

Anything after the L in the .htaccess file is ignored.

To use the code in places other than the last line use the code:
RewriteCond %{HTTP:VIA} ^.+pinappleproxy
RewriteRule .* - [F]

By: cindy

cindy — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:40:36 +0000

you can block them in your htaccess with:

RewriteCond %{HTTP:VIA} ^.+pinappleproxy
RewriteRule .* - [L,F]

i have a workpress plugin that does the same thing if you are interested.