xyz like spam is back
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My blog is https://blindinjusticeblog.com/.
Does anyone know whether these spammers are harmless (like with the email follows from Outlook addresses earlier this year)? Or is this more harmful?
Thanks in advance!
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@catwoodsporchparty, @blackbutterfly768, as @thesacredpath indicated above, we’ve made a change that should block these. This will not remove any likes from your notifications that are already there, but you should not be receiving any more. Please let us know if you do still see new notifications about likes like these coming in.
I’ve disengaged likes for comments until this is resolved.
That won’t make any difference, as you’re getting notifications for likes on comments you made on sites you don’t own as well, and even if you disable comment likes on your site, comments can still be liked directly from the Reader, and from the WordPress.com Notifications area.
There is no way this can harm your site or your account. This is an attempt by the spammers to get traffic to a specific site, as all these profiles link to the same set of Russian escort sites. Those sites might very well attempt to install malware on your computer, but as long as you don’t click on the usernames to visit those sites there is no danger.
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Thank you for resolving the issue – I’ll be on the lookout to see if it helped. I have a question regarding your response:
“There is no way this can harm your site or your account. This is an attempt by the spammers to get traffic to a specific site, as all these profiles link to the same set of Russian escort sites. Those sites might very well attempt to install malware on your computer, but as long as you don’t click on the usernames to visit those sites there is no danger.”-> What if a blog that I follow clicks there and gets the malware, will it infect their site or “only” their computer? Ie. will I have a chance of getting it if I click on the legitimate, real blog that I follow if they have been infected?
Just wondering how these thing work. (I follow a lot of blogs!) :) -
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Thank you for keeping any new likes from these spammers from showing up! I indeed found no new ones.
However, I still don’t want to have the previous likes with bad links showing on my site. I don’t want a visitor to click on a bad link or associate it with my site. So the only option is to no longer display the comment likes. I would prefer to show them.
So it would be great if wordpress could get rid of the bad likes on comments or give the users the option of deleting likes that are obvious spam. It would also be good to also have that same option for gravatar links on posts that are obvious spam. I also prefer to show those.
Thanks for all you do!
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I have suggested the very same thing. The ability to remove unwanted likes.
I haven’t had ‘Likes’ engaged for a very long time because of not wanting to direct innocent folks to anything that wasn’t related to the theme of my blog.
I have not seen new xyz likes – I was lucky I only saw a few. But those are still there and one should be very careful not to engage them. I too wish they could be removed or covered in some way.
At the very least WP should have sent all ‘real’ members an alert about this mess and warned them not to click on the links or icons. I do think however most of us have been smart enough not to.
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What if a blog that I follow clicks there and gets the malware, will it infect their site or “only” their computer?
It would only infect your computer or your browser. Visiting a website cannot cause another site, not even hosted on your computer, to be compromised.
The only way a website itself can be infected is if malicious code is added to it, usually via a vulnerability in a plugin or theme that has not been updated recently. But on WordPress.com that is not an issue, as we keep all the software up to date and constantly scan for malware on all sites hosted with us. And it’s impossible to even add the types of code that malware uses to a post, comment or widget on a WordPress.com site – we will automatically delete it if you try.
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So it would be great if wordpress could get rid of the bad likes on comments or give the users the option of deleting likes that are obvious spam
I’ve asked the developer who worked on blocking these if this is possible. We also have an open feature request for being able to moderate Likes. I can’t promise that something like that will ever be implemented, but I’ll your vote there.
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At the very least WP should have sent all ‘real’ members an alert about this mess and warned them not to click on the links or icons.
We have tens of millions of real users on WordPress.com. It’s not feasible to send out alerts every time a spammer manages to get around our defenses – all that will achieve is to get us blacklisted at all major email providers for sending out spam.
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The ‘what?’ comments seem to follow me around. Not a nice feeling, that… They don’t appear on my blog, probably as from the beginning I had the setting for comments on ‘…one approved comment to be able to comment freely’ Up to now that seems to stop them – but somehow they end up on the blogs I visit and again only on English speaking ones as far as I can see… A rather effective way to stop you from commenting, in fact, taking away the best part of blogging…
Thought I’d add this to the other experiences…
Grts
Nil -
Yes Nil, I too have been getting the ‘What?’ comments, I had one yesterday. I always moderate comments, so can stop them being published, but people who like to have their comments published immediately will be forced to moderate whether they like it or not, and yes, just like you they follow me to other blogs. – Esme C
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It seems to be enough to have the first comment of someone moderated, really – so that would not interfere too much with the ‘usual crowd’ that hangs around to comment – only temporarily till every legitimate commentator has been approved. The first-time spam comments go straight to the spam folder where they can be deleted (in my case, at least).
This must be hell on the Happiness folks!…
Grts
Nil
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