Spammed closed comments

As far as I can tell, under 1.5 there is no way to actually close comments – closing comments merely removes the link for normal humans to close comments, but if someone (e.g., a spammer) knows the URL to the comment-posting script, they can still post. This needs to be fixed…

Ah, I see. Thanks. Yep, it’s time to upgrade…

Actually, in v1.5, closing comment in Options/Discussions only closes comments on future posts. You have to edit past article and deactivate comments as well. Or, you could just delete wp-comments-post.php.

See “I have disabled comments, but comments continue to be posted.” here: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Combating_Comment_Spam#Q_.26_A

No, this is happening even on posts where comments are disabled.

That is to say – I’m not actually getting comments posted, but I *am* getting moderation requests. Dozens of them. To blog entries which, if you look at them on the blog page, say “Comments off” at the bottom.

Though when I try to reproduce this behavior myself (by turning on comments, entering data into the comments form on another computer, turning off comments, and hitting submit), I cannot – I indeed get an error saying comments are disabled. So how this is happening I’m not sure. Yet I’m definitely getting dozens of comment-moderation requests, and all of my blog posts are set to ‘comments off’, and that is reflected on the blog ( https://caconym.org/blog/ ) — not a one of the (few) entries has a link for comments.

[note: talking about WP1.2 not 1.5]

Actually, the latest trick that I have seen SPAMMERs doing now is hitting the Track Back links and getting their evil vile SPAM on your site that way. I have taken some measures by editing out the track back options on my comment page and beefed up the fields for using the track back links. I think they use older posts that carry the tack back links in the first place? I just hide them from the SPAMMERS and it seems to work. Those people from Texas-peons are hitting new ground with their latest tactic. They seem to be getting desperate with all the anti-SPAMMER measures in place now. If someone has a great idea for regulating the Back Track option without taking it out altogether, I sure would like to hear about it?

Here’s an example of what I first received:
================================================

• New trackback on your post # “SMASH AND GRAB AT FORT LANGLEY”
  Website: texas hold\’em (IP: 159.213.225.5 , 159.213.225.5)<br …>
  URI : https://www.spammersarecrap.com<br …>
  Excerpt:<br >
  trackback /&gt ; strong>texas hold’em< …/strong<br>
  If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. by texas hold’em

  You can see all trackbacks on this post here:<br >
  https://www.thomasso.com/index.php?p=XXX#comments<li/&gt;
  =============================================

My spams were from the same people… same inspirational quote included, even! (But mine were comment-moderation requests, not trackbacks.)

I too have this problem. I’ve just upgraded to 1.5 and all my posts are set to “Comments Closed”.

This is not a Trackback or ‘future’ posts issue – it’s a comment waiting for moderation to a post that already exists for which comments are closed!

This is a new type of spam for me – closing comments used to work – is this a bug in 1.5 or a new form of spanmming.

Opinions appreciated!

The particluar offender in my case is shown below:

A new comment on the post #8 “Autumn Gardening Workshop” is waiting for your approval https://www.growingawareness.org/?p=8

Author : texas hold’em (IP: 216.139.189.77 , 216.139.189.77) E-mail :
URL : https://www.tigerspice.com
Whois : https://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=216.139.189.77
Comment:
texas hold’em

I got another couple dozen of these moderation requests, again on comments-closed posts, this morning. This is a bug that needs to be fixed!

So it’s a bug then? How is this spam being generated?

I had some similar trackbacks (on open comment postings) from tigerspice over the weekend via two open proxies so I complained to both system owners. One of the proxies has now been secured. That’s one less this spamming pest can now use. If we put up defences and complain to open proxy owners (usually a simple misconfiguration), then we’ll make a difference. I’m using 1.2.2 so cannot comment on the 1.5 issues above however the trackbacks got into my WP database (moderation queue) without e-mail notification which was strange. Any ideas? Is that normal?

I’m now using v1.5 and the SpamKarma plugin has correctly caught every single one of the ‘Texas/TigerSpice’ trackback attempts;~) Despite that plugin’s honest declaration of its experimental flavour.

That’s odd. I heard that comments can no longer be posted on an entry which already has the comments disabled, whereas here I read about people still receiving spam on entries which comments are already closed.

Now I feel confused. Can anyone enlighten me?

See “I have disabled comments, but comments continue to be posted.” here: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Combating_Comment_Spam#Q_.26_A

Quote from the site:
“If you have unchecked ‘Allow people to post comments on the article’ at Options/Discussions, then you have only disabled comments on future posts. To completely disable comments, you will have to edit each past post and uncheck ‘Allow Comments’.”

The above was precisely what I did. I have disabled comments for every single entry (more than 3 days old). So comments can no longer be posted on these entries, right? ??

Sorry for asking so many qns. Just trying to clarify my doubts. ??