Stupid Creeps

WP Hashcash is WordPress’ strongest anti*pam plugin, boasting 100% efficiency. Over the last 6 months, not a single automated *pammer has been able to break through. It works by using client side javascript to compute a special value which is sent to the server for verification. Since robots don’t have javascript, it’s unlikely that they will ever send the correct hidden value.

Since I have Hashcash installed and still get *pam, and have other plugins too … and none of them are keeping the *pam out … I just have to post about this in particular.

In my referrer log I will see a domain request the comments php page, multiple times in a short period of time. The IP’s are all different, and the domains are all the same name as the referrer plugin has id them.

Then within a day to three days a small or semi-large slew of *pam comments will hit. Each one is the “exploiting other weblogs” kind … a faked name, faked email, and then someone elses blog link to a particular post as URL and two html links in the comment to two other real blog particular posts.

This happens again and again. Different IP’s usually, but sometimes the same ones crop back up.

So it’s back and forth. I get up to see what’s happened overnight, and it’s either nothing, or it’s the commentsrss requests or it’s the comment*pam slew there.

It’s a cycle.

I have had referrer bouncer installed. I have had cg-referrer installed … both are supposed to “bounce” baddies out.

I find it very manually frustrating. I put things into the right places, update bad domain names and such, and then later they come right in again anyhow.

Now this is the kicker, if I have Hashcash installed, why are the comments getting submitted?

Good question.

I’ve see the *pammer submissions of junk before, I don’t mean that actual *pam of medicine or poker, but this same sort, someone posting a comment or two or three of junk from other blogs, obviously not intended to be for my blog … obviously a spoofy junky thing.

Maybe that stuff back whenever that was, was a test.

Anyhow, the point of this all is, one of the “commentrss” takers comes up as ddeb.com … and that’s a poker site. So FWIW …

I have changed tactics now though. I got rid of my “punt” setting in cg-referrer, it wasn’t doing anything for me. I have bad_behavior installed now. Let’s see if IT can help. I also got rid of referrer bouncer.

I’m not complaining here of droves of *pam and bandwidth hogging, I’m only saying, for a blog that get very few comments a year, I am getting hit hard, despire having good defenses up.

So then, awhile back I had a referrer thing set up on all my domains, its’ the exact same thing as referrer bouncer is. Same original author. Anyhow, I had massive *pam attacks on another site at that time, and nothing I could do would get them bounced. So even though I looked through logs of referrers and copied out domains and IP’s and such and put them into the right places correctly, I didn’t stop getting that junk until I moved my blog to another host using a different domain. That killed it outright. I mean, I didnt’ set up any referrals to my new blog. I lost everything doing that, had to start back up with getting indexed with the search engines.

This blog here that this post is hosted on never had a bad time of it, until lately, these past few months it’s been ramping up.

How unpleasant is it to think I have a new comment to approve, and find that it’s cruddy neo-*pam. Whenever I see more than 1 in moderation I know they aren’t real comments. It’s deflating to my spirit to see such things. I like getting real comments, and rarely get one, so these dumb exploiters are just freaks.

Go ahead and try to smash more *pam at me, do it to this post. You usually do it to my latest post, something older and something newer. I don’t care. It won’t get through. Just makes me have to do work. Is that all you care about? Is this somehow making your Poker sites get more hits, or make me become fond of Poker sites? Or Viagra, or Diet Pills, or … whoever you pretend to be this time? Ho hum. Yawn. Now I need a nap.