I went to check on the WordPress SpamAssassin Plugin post and didn’t really have anything special to say, but was surprised to see that I’ve been proactively blacklisted for being a Comcast customer!
Warning: Your IP address 24.30.32.149 has been found on a spam advisory list. You will not be able to post comments. More information is available.
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand, I really do. I’ve done my research, paid attention to the spam tactics, run my own Spam Assassin server, etc, etc, etc. It’s just a bit offensive for me to be affected personally since I did nothing wrong.
This is why I dont’ like IP address blacklists, and why I don’t use [one][] of [the][] [many][] Wordpress plugins that use that technique, although I greatly respect the authors’ works.
What I do like are DNS blacklists based on the content of the comment spam (which to be fair I think some of the above do). This is one of my favorite features of Spamassassin 3.0 because it is really effective. Think about it. The point of spam of any kind, blog comment-embedded or not, is to drive traffic to a website that has a pitch for some scumbag’s product. So why not key your spam determination on that website?
The other main spam tactic I like and have liked for quite a while now is Bayesian filtering. This consists of breaking spam up into bits, most of them single words, and then by initially training a filter what good email is (say a letter from your mom), and what spam is (by looking at actual spam you have received), use this Bayesian technique which is a type of statistical math to measure if a given piece of email is spam or “ham”. With proper training, you can get 96%+ success rates no problem. (A bit of an aside, but my recommendations for client-side spam filtering are Spambayes and POPFile, both great products that work with any email program. Or run Thunderbird, which includes a Bayesian filter built-in.)
Spamassassin runs on your email provider’s server, which is the most efficient place to filter spam, and it uses both of these techniques, plus others, so harnessing it for comment spam blocking just makes sense.
[one]:http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2004/08/25/spammer-tar-pit
[the]: http://www.asymptomatic.net/wp-hacks
[many]: http://sm.farook.org/index.php?p=149
You should be offended. Your neighbors are running open Windows computers with subseven, Back Orifice, and many other trojans installed, which the comment spammers (and the email spammers!) are using with impunity. Comcast has done virtually nothing to stop this. The reason it affects you is because they use dynamic IP addresses, and the IP address the compromised computer had yesterday may well be yours tomorrow.
I don’t like blackhole lists when they affect large numbers of legitimate users, but in this case I have to make an exception: nearly half of all comment spam is coming from Comcast networks. That’s far more than any other source, even AOL!
I know this inconveniences legitimate users, and I’m working on something to allow legitimate users on blackhole lists to post, so even if you don’t have anything to say, keep watching.
Oh, I know, but that doesn’t make me like IP blacklisting any better. Unless you are experiencing a performance issue, I don’t see why you would bother.
When they make over 700 POST requests in a few minutes from almost as many different hosts, yes, it’s a performance issue. In any case it’s irrelevant; I’ve reopened the comment form to Comcast subscribers as I have another method working that blocked every last one of them (355 today).
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My parents used to torture me as a child. ,