I’ve been having pretty good success with MT-Blacklist in blocking (or removing) comment spam.<\/p>\n
The approach it takes is interesting. Rather than trying to track IP addresses (which can be spoofed) or e-mail addresses (which can be spoofed even more easily), it looks at URLs, links in the comment. If they are on the blacklist, it gets blocked.<\/p>\n
(You can also use that to block certain text, but that’s not the way it’s designed to work.)<\/p>\n
So, why not take that approach with e-mail spam? Aside from viruses and Trojan Horses and the like, what really sets e-mail spam is the links to the commercial sites. The verbiage its all wrapped up in makes no difference to a large degree (as seen in some recent efforts to spoof Bayesian filters). If the link isn’t usable and visible, the e-mail has done no good. And since URLs must be established to do any good, and that costs money and takes effort, it seems like a better way to strike back at spammers.<\/p>\n
Are there any mail spam products that focus just on URLs? It really seems to me that would be a superior approach. Unless I’m missing something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been having pretty good success with MT-Blacklist in blocking (or removing) comment spam. The approach it takes is interesting. Rather than trying to track IP addresses (which can be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6063,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/01\/crafty_little_b.html","url_meta":{"origin":4754,"position":0},"title":"Crafty Little Buggers","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 1-Jun-04 9:38am","format":false,"excerpt":"Spam mail from folks with nonsense names (brxtlfrk@spamking.com), or clearly made-up and unrecognized names (bambi del toro)? 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Over the last week, I've had four or five comments pop up that were innocuous \"Hey, nice post\" types of...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10414,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/24\/reducing_server_load.html","url_meta":{"origin":4754,"position":2},"title":"Reducing server load","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 24-Jan-07 11:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"Got an e-mail from the good people at Hosting Matters over the weekend that comment spam activities on my blog were causing some significant server hits, with suggestions on what...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7118,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/10\/26\/rubbing_their_n.html","url_meta":{"origin":4754,"position":3},"title":"Rubbing their noses in it","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 26-Oct-04 9:46am","format":false,"excerpt":"Nifty little bit of PHP code here to show your MT-Blacklist stats on the front page of your blog. Probably not going to do it myself, but thought it worth...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7713,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/13\/spam_by_any_oth.html","url_meta":{"origin":4754,"position":4},"title":"Spam by any other name …","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Jan-05 3:36pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So, a somewhat disturbing evolution in the War on Comment Spam -- the stealth URL. And it shows why blacklists will only ever be of limited use as time goes...","rel":"","context":"In "Spam"","block_context":{"text":"Spam","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/computer-security\/spam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4887,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/12\/zap_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":4754,"position":5},"title":"Zap","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 12-Dec-03 10:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"Two instances of comment spam this morning, and a couple of others over the past few days. These tend to be of two types: 1. Gosh! 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