WordPress.com

1. formulaoneupdate
   Member
   Aug 23, 2011, 9:51 AM

   been using WP for about six months and am very happy with it. I very quickly got a lot of spam in the comment-section, and also rather quickly learned how to block these, by listing the IP address on the Discussion-settings and all. That´s been working briliant for a long time, but now it just doesn´t anymore.
   I get spam in the comment section three times every day now, roughly, and many of them are on the block-list. I thought the idea was to block and never allow that IP address to comment again, but apparently it slips very easy and un-noticed into my comment-section. Can someone explain this?

   The blog I need help with is formulaoneupdate.wordpress.com.

2. teamoyeniyi
   Member
   Aug 23, 2011, 11:47 AM

   Banning IP addresses is not a good idea as most IP addresses these days are dynamic. Meaning you ban one person today and a different person tomorrow who happens to get that IP address when it is allocated, but the original person you tried to ban is now not banned as they have a different IP address.

   I can't answer as to why those IP addresses are not being blocked though.

3. macmanx
   Happiness Engineer
   Aug 24, 2011, 5:31 AM

   The next time this happens, please unapprove the comment and send us details via http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ so we can investigate.

4. formulaoneupdate
   Member
   Aug 31, 2011, 8:47 PM

   Thanks for the replys, I have contacted support about these questions, mainly why the same IP addresses seems to slip through, even though thery´re on the block list.

   If banning IP is abadi idea, then what do you suggest?

5. timethief
   Member
   Aug 31, 2011, 8:58 PM

   IP banning is useless. ISP's save money by placing hundreds in the same IP block and that means blocking hundreds in an attempt to circumvent moderating comments and sending those that are spam to where they belong the spam filter. Then the spam filter "learns" which one to sequester in the spam queque. Aside from that there are those who have dynamic (ever-changing IPs). And then there's the reality that we can unplug a router and and get another IP or simply use a different computer with a different ISP. My recommendation is to moderate your comments.

6. formulaoneupdate
   Member
   Sep 1, 2011, 1:37 PM

   Timethief, so basically have people register first before they register? But will that help? I mean, won´t they just register a false email address and basically do the same?

7. timethief
   Member
   Sep 1, 2011, 4:30 PM

   No they do not have to register. You simply have to use the settings available on the Discussion settings page to set up your default comment settings to (1) either moderate first time commenter only or (2) to moderate all comments. In other words We cannot rely on IP addresses or email addresses. You are the gatekeeper. You mark comments as spam and the spam filter learns to sequester any comments from the same sites in the spam queque. You may be interested to know that over 80% of all comments submitted to all blog on the WordPress.com site every day are spam.

Topic Closed

This topic has been closed to new replies.