[Plugin: AVH First Defense Against Spam] Feature Request: Email/Username/Multiple Blacklist Threshol

  • AVH stops the majority of spam on my blogs. However, what I’ve been noticing as of late is that all the spam comments that make it through AVH have used new IPs that haven’t been blacklisted yet but have used usernames and/or email addresses that appear multiple times on one or more blacklists.

    In one case, a spammer that managed to get through AVH on my blogs used a username that appeared 32 times in one blacklist alone, but because the IP he used was “fresh”, he managed to get his comment through to moderation.

    Another spammer that got through used a username that appeared 3 times, in combination with an email address that appeared 6 times, both within the same blacklist. But since the IP used during the spam attempt was fresh and unblacklisted, the spammer still got through.

    It would be great if you’d consider adding an option to AVH that enables it to take into account the frequency of usernames and emails on a blacklist when a visitor attempts to post a comment.

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/avh-first-defense-against-spam/

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Author petervanderdoes

    (@petervanderdoes)

    I have been thinking about this, one problem with user names is that also common normal names are used by spammers. The name peter for example appears 128 times in the SFS database.

    A ban on email address is something I might consider, I’ll check into that one.

    Thread Starter frikafrax

    (@frikafrax)

    Matching on just usernames would be a bad idea so I thought using criteria that is a combination of usernames with email addresses and their frequencies would help bans from being too broad.

    I was thinking about stopping those spammers who use “spammy” usernames like “buy viagra cheap” or “streaming music” (etc) many, many times.

    But you’re right. Adding an option to take frequency of email address into account over usernames looks like the way to go.

    The frequency of use of identical email addresses appears to yield far more results, at least on SFS’s database.

    @ frikafrax

    Use WordPress built in tools to moderate usernames and email addresses.

    Thread Starter frikafrax

    (@frikafrax)

    @mickeyroush

    We were speaking about the frequency of appearance of usernames and email addresses within the context of external blacklists. WordPress’ built-in tools don’t poll external blacklists.

    frikafrax wrote:

    @mickeyroush

    We were speaking about the frequency of appearance of usernames and email addresses within the context of external blacklists. WordPress’ built-in tools don’t poll external blacklists.

    Oh I see. You probably need to use something like ZBBlock or another script for that. IMHO I would still use WordPress’ built in moderation/blacklist tools for common “spammy” words. Unless your site requires the use of those words. None of my sites require the use of most common spam words. I also try not depend solely on polling external lists like SFS, PHP, or Spamhaus as something could happen between you and them, so having an additional moderation/blacklist seems useful, but I can see how it could get extensive and inaccurate for some.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • The topic ‘[Plugin: AVH First Defense Against Spam] Feature Request: Email/Username/Multiple Blacklist Threshol’ is closed to new replies.