Sudden increase in spam on one post
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Like everyone I get some spam comments and Akismet does a good job of catching them. I normally check my spam filter every couple of days as occasionally genuine comments get stuck there. But in the last couple of weeks one (old) post has suddenly been getting hundreds of hard-core porn linked spam comments. They were all caught by Akismet but they did make checking my spam impossible – and I did worry about my young daughter seeing them, as she blogs on another of my WP sites. In the end I closed comments on the post and, lo and behold, the same kind of comments immediately started appearing in another place – actually on a page rather than a post. Neither of the places where these spam comments appear to have previous ‘allowed’ spam comments, which I know can be a way in for spammers.
Any advice on how to stop these without closing comments altogether – or do I just have to learn to live with them?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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What you describe is very common spammer behavior. Are you aware of this setting?
Automatically close comments on articles older than __ days – This setting can be used to have comments closed on articles that are X days old. As an example, if you only want articles to accept comments for 30 days you would check the box and type 30 into the text field. http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#other-comment-settings
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This page > Settings > Discussion
Discussion settings is where you set up defaults for comments.
As you have found we can also override the default settings and enable or disable future comments on any post or page. -
timethief, thanks for the reply and the link.
I was aware that you can automatically turn comments off after a certain amount of time – but to be honest one of the joys for me of blogging is the comment that suddenly appears on an old post when somebody new stumbles across my blog. I am loathe to start widely turning off the opportunity to comment, and was just hoping there might be other things I could do to deter such a sudden onslaught of spam.
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Over 80% of all comments submitted every day to .wordpress.com blogs are spam. Morover, the majority of all “information” on the internet is spam. Those are realities we face. See tellyworth ie. Staff says in this thread > https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/akismet-issues?replies=15#post-438186
Note that you have complete control comment moderation. http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-moderation If your blog is public others can, of course, read it. They can submit comments but you can Moderate all comments and choose which ones to approve or not.
For trolls, you can “blacklist” them at Settings > Discussion toward the bottom of that page. Enter their email address, their username, and if they included it, their website. That will automatically send them to moderation so that their comments do not appear on the blog. Do note though that if they are determined, they can use a different email address or username to get around that. Also, do not put their IP address in the blacklist. IP addresses are no longer unique, and you might end up blocking legitimate visitors. Also, all they would have to do is go to a wi-fi hot spot, or connect via a different ISP and they could get around that.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklistOne other thing I would suggest is to set your blog so that first time commenters are held in moderation till approved, then from that point forward they will not need approval. Settings > Discussion. The next step on that of course is to set it so that all comments are held in moderation until approved. That way you are in control, and they might just get tired and go elsewhere after a while.
I recommend all bloggers scroll down on this page to “5 things every blogger should know about spam” and read what’s there.
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tt, thanks again. These spam comments are not appearing on my blog – they are all caught in akismet, so it is not that I need to find ways to get them into moderation – I would just rather they did not find their way to my little blog at all!
Having read through the links you posted, I thought I would change the setting for “don’t discard spam on old posts” so at least the comments would not stick around in my spam filter. But in fact the box for this is already unchecked, so in theory these obvious spam comments should automatically get deleted without me seeing them. Not sure why that is not happening…
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As an example, if you only want articles to accept comments for 30 days you would check the box and type 30 into the text field. http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#other-comment-settings
Did you insert a number of days or not?
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I don’t want to turn off comments after 30 days; I was attracted to the idea of akismet automatically discarding spam on old posts – are you saying this option can only kick in IF i turn off comments after 30 days?
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Sorry. Software has no idea what “older articles” means unless we define it bu insertiung a number into that setting. If we do not want to have spam automatically deleted by Akismet on on older articles with “older articles” being defined by the number we place in that setting then we do not check-mark that box and we do not enter a number into that setting.
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Ok time thief, thanks for persevering with your advice. I guess there could be a way that askimet discarded spam on old posts (with some standard definition of ‘old’) without us needing to turn off comments to make that happen, but I understand that it doesn’t work that way.
Guess I’ll just have to get used to all that spam…
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