More Trackback spam

[zoli]

Is it just me, or does anyone else experience more intense trackback attacks for the last two days?

[gristgal]

A day or so ago John told me (email) that the system has been under heavy spam attack, and they've had to put lots of other stuff on hold to deal with it. (eerie music)

Visualize valiant warriors in chain mail on their spirited chargers circled around to defend a caravan of important and vulnerable personages and treasure (that's us and our blogs), shields up and swords flashing as they fend off swarms of ugly flying things with long talons and vampire-style teeth. :shudder: :ugh:

What you're seeing is what has gotten past our brave defenders. Which means ya gotta pull that poisoned dagger with the jeweled golden haft out of its sheath hidden under your silks and furs, and stab any that get past them to you.



I'm very grateful that we can now control trackbacks through the section at the bottom of the main administrative page - the one you go to automatically when you login. A couple showed up on mine that had innocuous, legitimate-sounding names, but when I looked at the content, they were "spam blogs" That's better than porn spam trackbacks, true, but still undesirable.

I think you can set whether trackbacks have to be approved before they actually appear - or maybe that's the new default? And that's as much as I know about it, sorry.

[john]

Zoli, it's not just you... Trackback spam has indeed been rising incredibly over the past few months throughout the blogosphere, and the past few weeks have seen a rapid rise. As gristgal knows, the vast majority of our resources over the past few weeks have been devoted to defending against this issue...

We'll be rolling in some additional protections against these kinds of abuse in the short term, and expect that we will soon be able to decrease the amount of spam which gets through to your control panel through additional layers of security.

[gristgal]

Can you call in the Marines?

I just found eleven new spam trackbacks. All different; no dupes. It's gotta be done by automation, right?

This is past weird; it's absurd;
How can it be deterred?
Spam email will lose its crown;
It's a good thing the web won't melt down.
This is a spacing kludgegristgal, © 2006

[john]

Yes, it is of course done by automated methods which is why we do suggest that most bloggers should set their trackback spam protection to always moderate.

Don't worry, the web won't melt down.

[zoli]

11? Haha, easy life... 52this morning.

[gristgal]

Ooooooooooooooooooo.

Owwwwwtch.

My most sincere sympathies.

Didja click the one at the top to delete all? Or do you also have your own legit trackbacks that make you hafta click each one separately? :wince:

John, if the only trackbacks on a given page of them are spam, and we click the box in the header line, will that delete that page only, or all trackbacks?

I'm trying to see if there's a way to speed up the process safely here.

[zoli]

Sure you can speed it up somewhat. If I have 20+ spam, I select display 25, then click the box at the top, then manually unlick those that are legit. Only the ticked ones will be deleted.

Still, sometimes I manage to ban "friendlies". 2 days ago I found my own domain on the ban list, it must have been those mass deletions.

John, I think two little improvements would help:
- between 5 and 25 perhaps have a display of 10
- option to exlude already posted entries. including them makes sense when moderation is only for suspected spam, but with "moderate all" setting, it only clobbers the pic and there is more manual clicking when on a list of 25 you have 5-8 already posted ones.

[gristgal]

[john]

option to exlude already posted entries. including them makes sense when moderation is only for suspected spam, but with "moderate all" setting, it only clobbers the pic and there is more manual clicking when on a list of 25 you have 5-8 already posted ones.

That's a good suggestion. Noted.

I'd like to endorse zoli's request for an intermediate number of items displayed - at least for comments and trackbacks. Often 5 is too few, and 25 is just too many.

Unfortunately the trackback spam problem is growing so fast that this issue (that you sometimes find yourself with 15 trackbacks so no choice between 5 and 25 in the dropdown menu is inconvenient) is not likely to be an issue for you for very long: the spammers are increasing their velocity so rapidly that you'll soon be asking why is there no 100 or 250 in the dropdown menu, and that is the problem we are working hardest to solve... Thousands of spams daily are already being prevented from appearing in your control panel, we're working to reduce the amount of spams that get through this first layer of defense.

why won't the forum software do an attributed quote? It also acted cranky about quotes period

This latest upgrade to the phpBB forum software we use here has some glitches, it seems.