New Anti-Spam Measures

By olekasper. Tuesday, 12. September 2006, 11:40:14

anti-spam, spam, comments, trackbacks, akismet

We are currently testing out using Akismet to combat trackback spam and comment spam in blogs and photo albums on the Opera Community.

This means that if someone posts a comment to one of your blog entries, the contents of the comment is sent to Akismet along with the IP address of the commenter and some other information to better verify whether the comment is spam or ham. If the comment is decided to contain spam, only the blog owner will see the comment and may act upon it by either telling us that it is not spam (and thereby allowing everyone to see the comment) or by deleting it.

We are very interested in hearing how this initial implementation works out. We want to hear whether you get a lot of false positives (non-spam marked as spam) or false negatives (spam not marked as spam) and how you think we can flesh out the feature properly.

Only comments and trackbacks to public blog posts and albums are checked for spam, as those are the ones usually exposed to spammers.

One year anniversaryProblems, problems, problems

Comments

Great!

BTW, big thanks for fixing broken links to new comments with - now all work with pagination.

By FataL, # 12. September 2006, 11:47:00

What about new trackback notifications sent to blog owners? Is it implemented?

By quiris, # 12. September 2006, 12:07:37

I used Akismet on Opera Watch for a little while, but gave it up. After using it for a bit, Akismet started identifying legitimate comments as spam -- perhaps they view the word "Opera" as spam. It was so bad, that I barely had any real comments pass through the filter.

Now I use word blacklists, as well as blocking IP addresses of those who have spammed me in the past.

I disabled trackbacks, after I was getting way too many spam trackbacks (even with my trackback validation).

With all my spam fighting techniques, I still get over 30-40 spam comments a day, they're a pain.

I hate spammers.

By danigoldman, # 12. September 2006, 14:00:05

Did you try teaching Akismet via their API?

Anyway, a test run before the summer did a good job at identifying spam, with very few false positives. We'll try it out a bit and see how it goes.

By olekasper, # 12. September 2006, 14:08:55

Yes I did try teaching it, I would always "De-Spam" false positives. It was a tough student

By danigoldman, # 12. September 2006, 14:19:03

I have only recently re-allowed anonymous comments in my Blog since the last major spam attacks.

By klingoncowboy4, # 12. September 2006, 17:11:24

Interesting. I was not aware that Akismet was available to software other than WordPress.

I guess I need to put Photomatt back on my blogroll!

By Kelson, # 12. September 2006, 18:35:39

Good to hear that something's been done. I'm going to implement blog commenting and test this out.

By coxy, # 13. September 2006, 23:20:34

Possibly un-related, but there are at least three reports in the forums of people having trouble with their comments.

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=158143

and see Riene's post on here -

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=149964

By Mekkinz, # 14. September 2006, 09:12:37

Great, Let us check this

By krishnan, # 14. September 2006, 14:25:03

wrong

抗议!

我被spam了
但我不是广告散播者
要求归还我的正常评论权利

By i9t6r4, # 14. September 2006, 14:25:57

English please.

By haavard, # 14. September 2006, 14:59:07

Good one guys!
I'd be glad to let you know about the comments I get in my blog.
Dan

By dmfalmeida, # 14. September 2006, 18:27:59

Muchas Gracias! Anything to defeat the spammers is a good thing in my mind. I had to manually delete a lot of spam from my blog in the past couple months.

By organicchunkysalsa, # 16. September 2006, 02:54:09

I，non-spam marked as spam！！！！！！！！！HATE

By gongteng, # 16. September 2006, 05:17:59

Great idea!

By miamaus78, # 16. September 2006, 09:50:53

Good thing I already had my comments option toggled to OFF in my blog. I have enough spam filtered already in my Opera inbox, no thank you.

By Aimee1, # 16. September 2006, 21:31:25

Could you tell me where can I find the configuration of this function？？？

By kerby2008, # 17. September 2006, 14:34:45

Further to my comment above, my research suggests that there's a problem with Friends commenting on Friends Only Posts.

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=149964

By Mekkinz, # 17. September 2006, 17:01:23

Why someone I think their comments aren't contain spam,but these comments were hiden,for example,my friend leeloo.

New Anti-Spam is very good,thanks a lot~

By syyoung, # 18. September 2006, 08:32:18

please help us quickly~thank you~many many chinese non-spam marked as spam~!!!

By gongteng, # 18. September 2006, 14:18:53

How about the open source Bad Behavior project as a first defense, and then Akismet ?

Bad Behavior is a set of PHP scripts which prevents spambots from accessing your site by analyzing their actual HTTP requests and comparing them to profiles from known spambots. It goes far beyond User-Agent and Referer, however.

It also blocks many email address harvesters, meaning less e-mail spam, and some types of automated cracking attempts, improving your server’s security.

By dantesoft, # 21. September 2006, 01:28:35

i want to tell you that i'm not posting a spam,but it marked the comment i posted as a spam!how can i fix it?

By zh_cn, # 23. September 2006, 10:08:18

Could it be that you happened to get the same IP address as a spammer somehow?

By haavard, # 23. September 2006, 14:09:25

I'm being marked as spam whatever, wherever, whenever I write a comment within the opera community! What's going on? I didn't use any improper words, or made any advertisements- I can't even comment on my own blog? What's it supposed to mean? Hope you can fix it soon. Best regards, a boy marked as spammer-awaiting moderation, Timm.

By AzureTimm, # 29. October 2006, 00:02:59

AzureTimm, it might be that you are on the same IP as a known spammer. If you are using proxies or simiar to access the Internet, this might very well be true.

This should not happen anyway though. We are looking into creating some proper administration systems for the spam system. As of now it does not function satisfactory.

By olekasper, # 2. November 2006, 20:41:36

I'm being marked whenever, whatever, wherever I write a comment- even on my own blog page- it's driving me mad. I solemnly swear that I didn't use any improper words, yet I get marked! Can we allow our friends to post whatever they like and without being checked? I'm really fed up with this...
Best regards, a "spammer", Timm.

By AzureTimm, # 3. November 2006, 00:26:38

If you read olekasper's comment he mentions the possibility that you are using the same IP address or proxy as a known spammer. If this is the case, then it doesn't matter if you don't use "improper" words.

By haavard, # 3. November 2006, 09:35:06

Is there a general block against Chinese proxy servers? I'm a Chinese Opera Mini user, surely I'm using proxy server- but others may not. Is there a way to solve it at all?

By AzureTimm, # 3. November 2006, 09:56:23

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