WordPress.com Forums » Topic: Can you turn off the Spam Filter? http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter WordPress.com Forums » Topic: Can you turn off the Spam Filter? en Wed, 22 May 2013 19:48:43 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.1-alpha-2539 raincoaster on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532229 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:15:40 +0000 raincoaster 532229@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ You know, if Danny is self-promotional at all, leaves signature links, or gets into fights with other bloggers in their comments section, it's quite possible that one of those other bloggers reported his comments as spam, with the result that they're going into everyone's spam box. Contact Akismet directly to deal with Danny's situation.

]]> ellisz on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532228 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:14:57 +0000 ellisz 532228@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ You've hit the problem. I posted from my machine, in a different city, as the blog owner while cutting / pasting Danny's comments and it still flagged it as spam. So it was obviously something in his comments. For the life of me, I can't see what.

I'll give it a chance, but not really impressed thus far.

Thank you for your patience and your help.

]]> thesacredpath on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532226 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:11:21 +0000 thesacredpath 532226@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ His IP address would be different from yours unless he is in the same city and on the same ISP as you are, but there are many other factors. When you make a comment, WordPress can "see" the cookie it placed on your computer, so it knows you are OK and even if you are logged out when you put in his comment, it knows you are the blog owner.

One of the blogs I'm associated with here has nearly 10,000 comments in a little over a year and a half, and Akismet accuracy is 100.00%. That means that the % caught incorrectly is under 0.005%.

Even on my poorly neglected blog here accuracy is 97%, and I use that blog to "de-spam" people who report getting caught here in the forums, so that number will always be lower than what it actually is.

If you don't want a spam filter, you can self-host a blog and then don't activate Akismet or any other spam filter and you can do it all manually.

Give Akismet a chance, and have Danny make another comment and then de-spam him. I think what you will find after a couple months is that Akismet is very accurate and very few legitimate comments will actually get caught.

]]> ellisz on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532221 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 06:55:19 +0000 ellisz 532221@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ BTW: Clicking "not spam" doesn't post the comment to the blog. The comment just disappears.

]]> ellisz on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532220 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 06:52:33 +0000 ellisz 532220@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ I even tried posting it myself. So, it wasn't an IP address. It had to be content. What part of that was interpreted as spam?

I just went through my Spam folder (didn't know it was there.) Found that about 30% of the messages were NOT spam but were comments that I didn't even know about. This is an unacceptable rate of false positives.

I hate spam as much as anyone, but not to the point that I want to lose such a high # of legitimates. Esp. when advertised (above) that "you can take it to the bank that it's spam" (paraphrased).

Users SHOULD be given the option to use this technology, knowing full well that opting-out could cause additional unwanted spam.

]]> thesacredpath on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532212 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 06:25:46 +0000 thesacredpath 532212@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ My spam record so far is 450 per day. It has settled down quite a bit lately though and I'm down to right around 125 per day. Each morning when I boot up my computer, there is anywhere from 30 to 60 waiting for me to go through. It only catches a legitimate comment about 1 or 2 times in a 6 month period.

As to why Danny was caught, perhaps his IP address is within a block of known spammers. Perhaps someone else actually spammed some of his comments for whatever reason.

What you need to do is to "un-spam" his comments and then he will not get caught in the future. When in the spam folder, hover your mouse over the line with his comment, or anyone else that happens to get caught and click the "not spam" link. If you don't do that then they will continue to get caught.

]]> auxclass on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532208 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 06:14:23 +0000 auxclass 532208@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ You can approve spam crap into your blog if you want - Akismet is a feature - having ran blogs with and without it, Akismet saves a lot of work - my main site gets up to 300 spam comments a day - that is a lot of "moderating"

Also having Akismet on all the time helps keep WordPress.COM free of junk Spam which will mess up the entire sites SEO with the search engines if there is a lot of Spam on the site.

]]> ellisz on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532207 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 06:07:54 +0000 ellisz 532207@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Why can't I moderate my own posts? Why am I forced to use an automated system?

This is a bad idea.

]]> thesacredpath on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532151 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 02:15:52 +0000 thesacredpath 532151@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ First, you cannot turn off the spam filter,

Akismet is always changing and adapting to keep up with spammers who are continually changing their tactics and switching from email address to email address and ISP to ISP. Sometimes innocents get caught when those changes are made to keep up with the spammers. If an innocent gets caught in the spam filter, you want to un-spam them. When you do that Akismet will learn and within a day or two they won't get caught anymore.

I've also known of instances where someone gets marked as spam on a blog by mistake which means they then get caught by the spam filter.

What you can do is go to http://akismet.com/ and use the contact form there and request that they remove that person from the spam filters.

]]> ellisz on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-532147 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 02:06:24 +0000 ellisz 532147@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ I had a legitimate comment without links today that simply would not post. If I didn't know the person who e-mailed it to me (so I could manually paste it into his other, shorter comment) then I wouldn't have even known about it.

Go to travelandmobility.wordpress.com and look at the comment by "Danny". Tell me why that was filtered out please? I would also like to turn off this spam filter.

]]> justjennifer on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-526691 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 07:06:43 +0000 justjennifer 526691@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ It also seems that there's been a big increase in the amount of human generated spam over the last week. I've been "marking as spam" at least 3 comments a day on my primary blog alone.

]]> timethief on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-526372 Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:08:43 +0000 timethief 526372@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ This post contains some tips for spotting spam comments, pingbacks and trackbacks http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/05/06/trackback-and-pinback-spam-what-to-do/

]]> raincoaster on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-526304 Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:47:25 +0000 raincoaster 526304@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ You're welcome. It's experience that'll teach you, but even that's not perfect; last week I deleted a real comment just because it was the generic "Great post!" and it turned out to be an actual compliment from a real blogger. Oops.

]]> appl3pie on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-526299 Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:20:52 +0000 appl3pie 526299@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Thanks, I will delete this.

]]> raincoaster on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-526027 Sun, 14 Nov 2010 13:33:15 +0000 raincoaster 526027@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Yes that is spam.

]]> appl3pie on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-526020 Sun, 14 Nov 2010 13:07:53 +0000 appl3pie 526020@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Hi thesacredpath, I think this may be spam then? On one of my blogposts?
Would you mind verifying?

http://cravingappl3pie.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/white-chocolate-sorbet/#comment-4

Thanks.

]]> panaghiotisadam on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-526002 Sun, 14 Nov 2010 09:22:18 +0000 panaghiotisadam 526002@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Taking my blog as an example,
number of comments caught by Akismet so far: around 3900;
number of comments incorrectly caught: four.

]]> thesacredpath on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-525881 Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:45:13 +0000 thesacredpath 525881@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Here is the bottom line with the akismet spam filter.

It is over 99% accurate meaning it misses or mis-identifies spam on average only 1 out of 100 times. If it says the comment is spam, you can pretty much take that to the bank as true.

You have approved a lot of spam comments. Sorry.

]]> thesacredpath on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-525880 Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:42:27 +0000 thesacredpath 525880@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ How to review comments (spam or otherwise) to determine if they are legitimate:

1. Any comment rife with links is 99.99999999% assuredly spam.
2. If you write a post about gardening and get a comment with a username of "lose weight now" it is 99.99999999% assuredly spam.
3. Visit the site linked to the username (make sure your virus protection is up to date because far too many of the sites will have malware on them. If it is spammy and covered with ads for viagra or other such spammy things, it isn't a legitimate comment.
4. Check out links on trackbacks/pingbacks as well. Look at the username, look at the site it is linked to. It won't take you more than a few minutes before you are able to spot.
5. Comments such as "exceptional article. Man i love the design of your site. Amazing site that i came across with stunning design. which theme are you using." are absolutely spam. Don't believe me? Check the site linked to the username. All they wanted to do is get a link to their site selling junk onto your site.

]]> thesacredpath on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-525879 Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:27:19 +0000 thesacredpath 525879@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ As an example, the following comments on your site are absolutely almost certainly spam.

Gewinne: http://danielakawmd.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/changes-to-our-blog/#comment-119

Click on this comment username and you get a list of sites that are all about car loans

ShomoSparaFar: http://danielakawmd.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/changes-to-our-blog/#comment-139

And this one is highly suspect. They are searching the internet for things like "weight loss and such and then they go to those sites and leave comments or do faux "trackbacks" to an article that supposedly links to yours, but you go to that site and never find a link to your site. Much of this is done by automation. All they are trying to do is get a link to their weigh loss CD onto your site, and they succeeded.

http://danielakawmd.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/self-hypnosis-how-its-done/#comment-81

]]> thesacredpath on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-525877 Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:14:16 +0000 thesacredpath 525877@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ No there is not, and the likelihood of it being that inaccurate is highly unlikely. Spammers are getting very good at making comments look legitimate. Can you give us a link to one of those comments that you think was not spam?

]]> danielakawmd on "Can you turn off the Spam Filter?" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-turn-off-the-spam-filter#post-525859 Sat, 13 Nov 2010 17:06:02 +0000 danielakawmd 525859@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Is there a way to turn off the Spam filter? Because half of the comments it stops are genuine comments.

Thanks

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