Why doesn't the Comment Blacklist work as described?
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While you were out earlier this week, I posted this note to the “forum”:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/why-doesnt-the-comment-blacklist-work-as-described
The symptoms remain as described: despite the Blacklist, the Moderation Queue still contains spam with those characters and words.
Perhaps there’s another setting that overrides the Blacklist, but that seems like another bug; if the Blacklist doesn’t get rid of matching spam, then it’s not really a Blacklist!
Thanks…
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi Ed,
Sorry to hear about this. Can you please contact Akismet directly regarding this matter?
They would be better able to assist you with this.
Cheers!
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> contact Akismet directly
I’ll do that, but you folks certainly have far more mojo with Akismet than I, a mere blogger, can ever claim…
After all, if the Blacklist doesn’t work for me, then it probably doesn’t work for anybody else blogging at wordpress.com; you should have some motivation to get it fixed for everyone.
Yes?
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No worries. Every ticket that enters their contact form, directly goes to the Akismet support team to be answered. :)
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According to Akismet support: “the comment blacklist feature in WordPress is a part of core, not the Akismet service or plugin”
So it appears the ball is in your court…
Given the Blacklist I’ve already posted, the filtering is definitely not working.
For example, I’m still seeing posts containing these snippets:
Michael Kors Handbags (multiple matches on “kors”)
Tryiոg to кeep Squad (Unicode “k”)
amoebic meningoenϲeƿhalitis (Unicode “p”)
cialis for daily use (multiple matches on “cialis”)
Coacɦ Handbags (Unicode “h”)
աhen I get ɦome (Unicode “w” and “h”)
Christian Louboutin Shoes Outlet (multiple matches on “louboutin”)
wabted tߋ sɑy (Unicode “o” and “a”)
And that’s just from the last dozen hours…
So, to reiterate: why don’t entries in the Comment Blacklist have any effect?
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Hi Ed,
After looking into your account, I could not find the spam you were mentioning. I’m assuming you deleted it. The next time this happens can you keep it there and let me know? I can then have my team look into it. Once it’s deleted it’s hard to determine what it is after the fact.
Thanks!
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I’ve been adding to the Blacklist and deleting spam as I do, but I’ll let it grow for a few days and point out some of the juicer items.
Most of the spam seems to be randomized text that’s impossible to filter by keyword, but I’m still seeing Kors & Louboutin, plus various Unicode characters: the Blacklist still isn’t detecting those strings.
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Here’s this afternoon’s haul:
Multiple matches on Unicode ASCII-impostor characters:
Submitted on 2014/03/17 at 15:03
Hey! Someone in mƴ Facebook groupSubmitted on 2014/03/17 at 16:10
… return ʏet again since і have book-markeɗ it.Submitted on 2014/03/17 at 15:56
… one Enɡlisɦman, while he rɑisеd his glass աithSubmitted on 2014/03/17 at 15:28
I gօt tҺis siteThere are others, but you get the picture…
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From the overnight haul:
Multiple matches on cialis:
Submitted on 2014/03/18 at 04:46Match on Unicode and “tthe”:
Submitted on 2014/03/18 at 02:23Match on “payday”:
Submitted on 2014/03/18 at 00:43Multiple Unicode matches:
Submitted on 2014/03/17 at 22:48Match on “vuitton”:
Submitted on 2014/03/17 at 21:47Shall I keep pointing them out or will those suffice to debug the problem?
Thanks!
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Hi Ed,
I just went into your Comments page and I don’t see any spam comments. The ones you pointed out are not there. I only see 6 comments on March 17th and 2 comments on March 18th.
Please let me know where you are seeing this spam and send me the link to where they are.
Thank you!
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For obvious reasons, I have comment moderation turned on, which results in zero spam messages appearing in the blog’s comments.
However, the Spam tab in the Comments page now has 145 message after a bit over 24 hours. All the pointers I gave refer to messages in that queue:
https://softsolder.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=spam
In the original problem description, I said “… despite the Blacklist, the Moderation Queue still contains spam with those characters and words.”
If the Blacklist worked as described, *all* of those comments I highlighted would be silently discarded. Alas, they’re still around.
Most recently…
Match on “kors”:
Submitted on 2014/03/18 at 12:09See what I mean?
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So the spam comments are ending up in the Spam folder to be clear? These comments do not show up in your blog. However, after 15 days they should be automatically deleted from your Spam folder. This allows you to see if legitimate comments end up in your Spam folder and you can un-spam them.
If the spam is ending up in the Spam folder then it is doing it’s job. However, if it is showing up as a legitimate comment then that would be an issue.
Thank you.
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Akismet is discarding about 1000 spams every day without asking me, which is a Good Thing. It’s missing about 15% of that total and leaving them for me to review.
At the current rate, the Spam folder will have 2500 entries after 15 days, which is obviously absurd; there is no possible way to examine that many messages and pick out any false positives.
In ordinary parlance, a “Blacklist” means whatever matches will be discarded. If a message matches one of those strings, I want it *gone*; I know for a fact that I don’t ever want to see those messages, ever, for any reason.
If that doesn’t happen, then there’s no practical difference between the “Comment Moderation” strings and the “Comment Blacklist” strings: I must examine each message.
Do you see why I think the Blacklist is broken?
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Currently, we have comments that include words in the blacklist enter your Spam folder; however, there has been talk of directly trashing them. I have brought this back to our team for re-review. I will let you know what they say once they get back to me.
Thank you.
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Perhaps make it a checkbox, so folks can configure it either way?
Obviously, I favor a scorched earth policy; Akismet is far too lenient on obvious spam.
Thanks…
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Hi there,
I just spoke with my team, and they stated that there are no plans to send comments with words in the Comment Blacklist straight to Trash for good reason. Unfortunately, while you may use this feature correctly certain users may not. This could lead to lots of legitimate spam ending up in the Trash folder.
I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help.
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This could lead to lots of legitimate spam ending up in the Trash folder.
Where on earth would you rather put “legitimate spam”, if not in the Trash?
The “Askismet anti-spam strictness” options already allow me to delete “the worst and most pervasive” spam, so there’s no “good reason” to not delete known-bad spam; you do it already!
Just add a similar option to the Blacklist that lets me select either “Add to Spam folder” or “Delete permanently”. If it defaults to the former, then nobody else will notice the change.
Akismet is losing against spammers. Please let me help it!
Thanks…
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