Spam Overload in Feedback section

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  kikiorleans · Member · Feb 8, 2015 at 2:44 pm

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  I have the same problem as described in this forum post but the topic is closed so I can’t add to that:
  https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/spam-queue?replies=3#post-1589597

  I just discovered 2500 spam messages in my feedback section. It all comes from 2 IP addresses, which I’ve added to the comment blacklist, but I guess that’s not much use.

  I also tried to delete them using the EMPTY SPAM button but that gets me an error every time; I have deleted most of the spam, am now down to 180 but the spam feedback seems to be coming in at 2 minute intervals meaning I’d be busy forever deleting…

  Could you please help with this issue so that this kind of spam doesn’t get collected in the spam folder but doesn’t show up at all?

  Thank you!

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  timethief · Member · Feb 8, 2015 at 8:55 pm

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  I tagged this thread for Staff assistance. Please subscribe to it so you are notified when they respond. To subscribe look in the sidebar of this thread, find the subscribe to topics link and click it.

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  kikiorleans · Member · Feb 8, 2015 at 9:18 pm

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  Thank you!

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  timethief · Member · Feb 8, 2015 at 9:21 pm

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  You’re welcome.

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  alexjgustafson · Member · Feb 9, 2015 at 8:48 pm

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  Hi Kiki,

  Thanks for reporting. I’ll get someone to help clear up the feedback spam. It takes a bit of time do that, even once it’s up and running, but should go more smoothly than fighting it one page at a time. :)

  The comment blacklisting keeps feedback in the spam folder and not in moderation, not deleting it immediately. The comment blacklists you have in place seem to be keeping a lot of spam out of your legitimate messages folder and in the spam folder today. So that was the right first step!

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  kikiorleans · Member · Feb 9, 2015 at 9:05 pm

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  Thank you so much alexjgustafson!

  One question: after the clean-up, will the feedback spam still manage to come in? Or is there a solution to keep it from even making it into the feedback spam folder?

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  justjennifer · Member · Feb 9, 2015 at 9:10 pm

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  I turned my contact form off for a while because I was overloaded with over 3000 spam feedbacks within one week. Once I painfully cleared those out, I turned it back on and was immediately hit by spammers again, so off it went again. I’m definitely interested in this as well.

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  dandelionsalad · Member · Feb 9, 2015 at 9:32 pm

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  I turned off the Contact form page a long time ago for the same reason. Way too much Spam and then I had to go and delete it in the Feedback page. Also interested in this discussion.

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  alexjgustafson · Member · Feb 9, 2015 at 9:34 pm

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  As the spam keeps coming in it will continue to collect. The spam folder will collect anything that looks to be spam, there’s not a way to delete it immediately when it hits the spam folder. Comment blacklisting is meant to help keep the legitimate responses separate from the spam, not to delete spam.

  The idea then is that you can just ignore the Spam ones, and only look at the “Messages” folder. We try to help with these cleanups when a big spike in spam comes up, but even if you just let it sit, all spam will get deleted automatically after two weeks.

  Your spam stats also look like filtering is going very well, even though the amount of spam coming in is high.

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  alexjgustafson · Member · Feb 9, 2015 at 10:27 pm

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  @kikiorleans

  Your Feedback spam list is now back to 0.

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  kikiorleans · Member · Feb 10, 2015 at 9:09 am

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  Thank you VERY VERY much! I appreciate your help!