The amount of SPAM that is making it through WordPress’ SPAM filter is on the rise – exponentially. Over the past week, I have had to delete between 30 and 50 comments or trackbacks about 4 times. ARGH!!!!! The SPAM filter is also catching much more. It seems as if every-time I log on, there are over 200 comments in the SPAM queue. Sadly, I’m not going through them all to check for false positives – it just takes way too much time.
On that note, I will mention that I won’t be deleting any SPAM that makes it through – or responding to comments or questions either – next week. I am on my way to Las Vegas on Saturday, June 2nd. I will be back late on Friday, June 8th. I do not plan on spending much time online – I’m hoping not to take my laptop. Hope springs eternal!
Life as I Know It 
I think I might use this weekend to install reCAPTCHA (http://recaptcha.net/) on my site. I’m not a big fan of CAPTCHA’s, but they seem like a necessary evil anymore, and at least this way, there’s a purpose to it.
Spammers annoy the heck out of me.
Jennifer, how do you know if something got through?
I don’t know if it’s a new wave or if upgrading to 2.2 brought on more spam, but I’m seeing a lot more too. I have all 1st time commentors set to moderate and am supposed to get an email re all comments that do go through. As far as I know, nothing is getting through.
But I wonder …. Last week I accidentally checked De-spam all instead of Delete all and they immediately “disappeared.” I figured I’d get emails saying they had all gone through as comments, but No.
Before I upgraded WP I saw this post about a new feature to recheck the blog for spam:
But I don’t seem to have the option Lorelle is talking about and I DID upgrade my Akismet plugin.
Anyway, just wondering how you know spam is getting through. Thanks.
P.S. Have a great vacation! I’m off to a conference tomorrow and another in 2 weeks. I guess these are my vacations.
Spammers bite! They are such a nuisance .
Karin, good luck with reCAPTCHA. It does some seem like a necessary evil.
I still have my blog hosted at WordPress – so I don’t have access to many of the add on widgets and such that have been created for WordPress installs.
Mark, I know that a SPAM comment oor trackback gets thru because I have a page where I can see all of the comments on my blog. I check this daily – and can see the latest comments. Of late, there are numerous trackbacks to older (and more popular) posts that are noticeably SPAM. Fortunately, the pornographic ones don’t often get thru Akismet.
I find it a bit confusing and frustrating to try and figure out the differences in hosted WordPress blogs and blogs using WordPress software. Someday, I may move my blog – but certainly not before I graduate 🙂
Thanks for the good wishes! I am really, really looking forward to getting away!
Thanks; yes, there may be a difference between WP=hosted and non-WP hosted blogs. But 10 just got through as “please moderates”. I think/hope they are actually stopped, but still! Besides just trashing them from the spam queue it’s 10 emails I had to handle.
I hate spammers! And I really try hard to not hate anyone. 😦