Spam

Posted in BloggingTagged , ,

A little while back on The Other blog, I was moaning about getting hundreds of comments in the spam asking how to log in from what seems to be a Spanish Bot. It only happpened on this blog, I presume because I have more ‘followers’ on here than on the other two blogs, and as I forget to check the spam with any regularity I had herds of them when I did check, and it took a while for them to delete. Since then I have had my Sherlock Holmes hat on, and have been digging about in the back corridors of the blog, and so found a way to stop them.

For anyone else who is having the Spanish invasion, here is how to repel borders. The images can be clicked on for a bigger version if you need it,

1) Go into the Admin section of your blog.

2) Go to settings which is on the left at the bottom

you can see at the top how many Spaniards this has trounced!!

3)In settings go down to ‘Discussion’ and click on it.

4) In the second section where it says Other comment settings make sure there’s a tick in the box next to where it says ‘Users must be registered and logged in to comment’.

Since I ticked the box on my blog I have had no spam at all, and all my regular commenters are getting through. I just get people who have wordpress accounts and are logged in to their own site when they comment on mine.

Of course this means that no-one outside of wordpress can comment, (and that includes bots), so you might miss out on a genuine outsider comment, but for me that is a small price to pay for being rid of the damn Muchos graçias. ?Como puedo iniciar sesion.

Anyways, hope that helps someone somewhere!

72 thoughts on “Spam”

  1. I have had that box ticked for years, and the comments you mention arrive in my Spam folder. I still get lots of them in there though. I did a ‘whois’ trace on that ‘Spanish’ comment a while back, and the url originated in Russia. I presume the Russkies concerned are using foreign languages to try to fool us!.
    Cheers, Pete.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  6. Ha! Very useful, although I am not yet as popular as you – only 537 spam comments so far. However I am also an admin on an Anglican church website, I have that locked down very tight. There is one very persistent would be hacker in Scottsdale Arizona, plus innumerable Russian acolytes all of whom seem to want a piece of the action. Why is a complete mystery to me, surely at the end of their lives they would want to look back on some worthwhile achievement???

    Liked by 2 people

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  7. I have a self hosted blog and I’m having JetPack issues. After not changing anything, all of a sudden no posts in reader and nothing ever in conversations in reader . . . Knock on wood, no real spam to speak of. So, if anyone has any words of wisdom regarding that, I would be super grateful. 🤠

    I appreciate these tutorials and great post fraggle.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I have no idea what goes on with self hosting and jet packs, I did try and fathom it out from the WordPress info pages, but my brain wouldn’t consider it to be anything but gobbledegook. It seems I have my ‘tech brain’ limits 😊. Sorry I can’t help ☹️

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. No worries on this end, Fraggle. I really wonder how the makers of SPAM really feel about their brand being used as a label for undesirable messages? It’s something of a natural order . . . or is it? 🤣

        Liked by 2 people

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  11. Thanks, I’d ticked all the relevant boxes and the scammers mostly go into my spam box. If someone new leaves a comment it asks me to moderate and after that it allows them to comment even if they are not WP users.

    Liked by 1 person

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      1. It comes and goes. Usually I get between 10 and 20 spam comments a day, but a couple of times I’ve had over 200. Since real comments are occasionally sent to the spam folder you have to glance at each one to make sure you’re not deleting something worthwhile, which makes it tedious.

        Liked by 2 people

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        1. April, here’s a solution that I use.
          (this assumes you’re using wordpress)

          Under your admin page, go to “settings”. then to the “discussion” tab. There should be a box labled “Disallowed comments”. Put the spanish phrase into that box as line (including the updside down question mark). Then hit save changes. Voila, any comment with that phrase will automatically go to your trash instead of your spam so you can check the spam for real comments much easier.

          Liked by 3 people

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          2. Thin sausages with sweet chili flavouring in them, they used to sell them in our Aldi and I’d buy 3 packs at a time, but they don’t seem to stock them anymore 😦 life isn’t the same now, siigh.

            😀 😀

            Liked by 1 person

  17. Hmm… I’m impressed you have had the patience to look through the spam folder! At one point I looked through my spam folder, but I stopped because I never found any real comments in there. I’m way too impatient!

    Liked by 2 people

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  18. “For anyone else who is having the Spanish invasion” hehe, in South America this advice had been saved so many taxes to the king there xP I admire your will to solve issues, fragglerocking. Is good to know about it and thank you for sharing it : )

    Liked by 2 people

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  19. I have tremendous problems with negative comments on my blog, and wondered if you could recommend an add-on that would help me avoid having my writings adorned with NOPES? I’m reviewing a horror film about a 400 year old Indian medicine man bursting out of a woman’s shoulder while Tony Curtis watches, and I’d like to have something effective in place by then…

    Liked by 2 people

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  20. I love the creativity, insight, and just plain insanity of the comments I get. I’m happy to pay the price of getting spam. Mostly, I forget to check it anyway, which is a shame because a few genuine people get banished there for what bad acts in past lives I know not.

    Liked by 2 people

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      1. I actually get quite a lot of requests to iniciar I can’t remember what. And an awful lot in Russian. You’d think that if you really thought you stood a chance of anyone responding you wouldn’t waste your time writing to someone who writes in a different language, but hey, what do I know?

        I admit, though, that I’ve pretty much stopped reading it. It’s gotten boring.

        Liked by 2 people

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  21. A great tip! But is it such a small price to pay? As you say, no one from the outside of wordpress can comment and people must first have wordpress accounts. I guess I am personally a little uneasy about this.

    Liked by 1 person

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  22. Thank you so much for this post. I have been inundated with spammers, thousands in fact, and cannot get round to answering the genuine bloggers posts – they must think I am rude.
    Your site is up there with the best too!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  26. Although, I have already worked on it, I like the way you presented it.

    “ For anyone else who is having the Spanish invasion…” 😁🤭

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  27. Pingback: Spam | By Hook Or By Book

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