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How to blog spam registrations? (28 posts)

  1. booblik
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I have got many spam blogs
    "Marthena beeps Lulu here Johnsr notes Naoma beeps Kinghaut blog Alethea good time blog Helena good time blog"

    how to block automatic signups?

  2. suleiman
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    look at their IP and block those baddies.

    or blog by their e-mail registration, they're usually all coming from a particular domain.

  3. ekusteve
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    One easy way to "block automatic signups" is to restrict signups to a single email domain...like your own. Of course, then you would need to create all blogs as the site admin.

    Steve

  4. alaskanbob
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I password protected my sign up page and haven't had a single splog since. Simple implementation.
    check it out at http://allalaskans.com/wp-signup.php

    Get the script at http://www.phpsecurepages.com/

  5. booblik
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    i can't blog mail domain. it is Gmail and i also has many normal registrations from Gmail

    i also can't block automatic signups becouse we one of the best blogging community in Belarus

    maybe let's to use captcha ?

  6. ekusteve
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    also can't block automatic signups becouse we one of the best blogging community in Belarus

    Hummm....I thought your question was, "How to block automatic signups?"

    Good luck.

    Steve

  7. drmike
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Do a search for Captcha (did I spell that right?) as there's a couple of solutions provided already. Do note though that you'll probably wind up with other issues down the road if you use them.

  8. booblik
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    2ekusteve устал я! i am work too hard i wrote little wrong words...

  9. darnold
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I was really just testing the multi user blog and forgot it was even install for a long time. When I went back to do some more with it I found over 300 blogs had been created. Looking a little deeper I found the blogs where getting created through a bot and many had a last updated time only one second from the time registered. So tonight I wrote a little script that queries the db and finds all the blogs that have an update time stamp of 1 second after the registered time. The script sets all the blogs it find to spam and then removes all the spam blogs from your site.

    I put the source code on a page to share with everyone.

    http://mu.ourfriendsrock.com/wp-includes/cleaner.html

    Save the source code in a .php file and upload it to your wp-includes folder. Then browse to it for the script to run.

    Let me know how it works for you. I added a cron job to my site that runs this script daily so I don't worry about spam bots getting me any more.

  10. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I'd have to do digging for the thread but we discussed the updating a second after creation issue in the past. When I saw it, it usually was an empty blog which makes me think it's more of a php hanging issue.

    That and another thread where the issue of autodeleting blogs without review really isn't that good of an idea.

    The splogs I've seen have varied in their times. Most of the ones I see update a few hours after creation. (ie they may be thinking we check first upon creation and then fall under the radar.)

    One thing you may want to consider is that most splog runs are going to come out of the same IP address. (My recond was 250ish from one IP address which is what got me started on this) If I noticed a certain IP address generating splogs over and over again, I'd block it. I'd double check though and make sure it wasn't an AOL proxy or anything like that.

  11. mysorehead
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Further do drmikes concerns about blocking IPs. I'm on a few education mailing lists and have heard a teacher talk about how Farm's edublogs have blocked her school's IP. I guess if a class of 25 students all try to create a blog at the same time it may appear to be a bot.

    Richard

  12. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Instead of making guesses, either the teacher or yourself needs to find out what IP addresses these folks are trying to create these blogs from and request that farms looks into the matter.

    You know what the word 'assume' stands for, right?

  13. mysorehead
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    ass (yo)u (and) me ?

    I'm not guessing and I was only responding to the concern about auto deleting and auto blocking.

    I did post at the time in response to the BB thread. The wording she used made it very clear what was happening was caused by BB.

    I'll forward the email to him, I rarely delete anything.

    Richard

  14. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Cool. I hate to see someone not follow up on an issue like that. It needs to be resolved.

    You didn't mention that you had posted about it originally. Can only go with what we see here.

  15. mysorehead
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    But that is the point drmike, everyone on these boards should assume that people posting are competent and well versed in mu unless they say they're not.

    No one can be expected to fully explain every angle of their post without every post becoming an essay. (As this one feels it may be.)

    Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned edublogs, I certainly wasn't having a go at Farms. In fact we've recently found out we live 10 minutes from each other and we plan to get together the week after next. I was just outlining (and trying to agree with you) that there do not seem to be easy answers to splogs and auto solutions can cause a lot of trouble if not properly monitored and thought through. Using edublogs as an example was only because it is one of the premiere mu sites yet it still has issues. It was a real life example, from a stranger with a premiere mu site.

    I've looked at the email I got which was on the Intel Master's trainers list for Australia. The sender is one of farm's bloggers and she said in the email that she was working through the issues (the email is from April). She was working through the problem herself and was getting the issue sorted. She was emailing in response to a question about blogging, she was not emailing a question about how to get her problem fixed.

    There was no need for me to involve myself in following up the issue, in this case.

    Richard

  16. Farms
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    No stress :) We get this stuff all the time, actually I've just ditched BB for edublogs.org because it was blocking soooooo many legit sites.

    But sometimes we do mistake an IP for spam, and block it... but I usually get an annoyed email (or contact through another server) pretty quickly :D

  17. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Actually I was wondering what was occuring as well.

    The way I saw it you had a client or associate who had an issue and there wasn't anything done to resolve the issue. I hate seeing that happen.

    Like someone having an issue with a plugin but never contacting support of the writter of the plugin to get assistance.

    everyone on these boards should assume that people posting are competent and well versed in mu unless they say they're not.

    That's what gets us in trouble like that thread where I linked the person to the search. We can't do that around here. There are folks who expect handholding and to be told specifically what they need to do to solve a problem. And when that doesn't occur, they get bent out of shape, lash out, call us rude, go elsewhere and call us rude, etc.

    To be perfectly honest, I should not have to tell someone here to check the webserver's error logs. Any system admin would know that that is the first place to look for what's causing a problem. But yet, we say that mutliple times a day around here. That's the level we deal with and, unfortently, those folks want and expect and demand handholding.

    There's a fair number of us here who dread everyday coming over here because of it as well.

  18. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Now can we please go back to helping folks instead of all this bitching?

  19. darnold
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I agree auto deleting stuff can get us in a lot of trouble however the only way to beat a bot is with a bot. I don't have the time to search through all the blogs and determine which ones are legit. Some of them are really convincing until I see a specific list of links. I think I'll add to the script and make it check for those links. There has to be a trend. Once identified it should applied on the creation side so they can be stopped before they are made or removed a second later. I'm also getting a ton of comment spam just recently. I'm still getting emailed even though I turn off the option to allow comments for my blog. I'm sure that's a whole different thread.

  20. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Maybe marking them as spam first with a link to your support ticket system or support email, waiting a week or month or so and then deleteing would be a better way of handling it. Give them time to ask you want is occuring.

    I'm actually against deleting as it just opens up the name again to be used again by the spammer.

  21. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    You could always delete it, and have that username added to the block list, so it doesn't eat up db space, but it can't be registered again.

  22. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Would make for a very long block list. Had like 1400 before I gave up counting.

    Gotta admit that's one of the reasons why I wanted the multi db upgrade. Mark it as spam and then never have to worry about it. Plus have a link back to the main site so if the spammer sends the site a link (like they normally do) your site gets the link credit.

  23. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Yeah, but I don't know if I would want link credit from something like that, you know?

    Then again, you can delete the blog without deleting the username, which would also keep it from being able to be registered again.

  24. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    They're going to link to your site anyway so why not?

    Also do remember we're getting those folks searching for "This blog doesn't exist yet. Sign up now.." results.

    Then again, you can delete the blog without deleting the username, which would also keep it from being able to be registered again.

    I do believe that you would be able to register the blog anyway. There's no restriction for stealing away a blog from a user who doesn't choose that option during signup. (There needs to be though.)

  25. darnold
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    That doesn't sound like a bad idea. I think I'll remove the delete stuff for now and just focus on marking them as spam. That way the username can't be used. The only problem I have with that is the size of the db. each blog creates 8 new tables and a new row in the wp_blogs table. After several hundred sblogs are created now the db is full of junk. You can see how it quickly multiplies to thousands of tables containing bad data. I think when I have a free minute I will create another script that emails the owner when the blogs is marked as spam. If they contact me great if not the script can check back and drop it in 30 days and add the username to the block list. I don't know of any plugin that does that now. Hopefully this will be useful.

  26. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Actually in that case, I'd just mark the user as a spammer. I do believe that disallows any new blogs to be created with that account.

    Actually I believe someone (Andrea?) wrote up a script to do something simular. Let me search the forums.

  27. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

  28. darnold
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Well there you go thank you sir.

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