False Positives

Can confirm, my copy of Cerber (also 8.9.6) is also generating false positives, despite switching it to Safe Anti Spam.

I am also running into this issue. Currently running 9.0, but I’m going to roll back to 8.5.3 after looking at the change logs – it looks like quite a few anti-spam changes went in after that version.

Hopefully I get back to a better state with the older version.

@turbodb Did the rollback help?

Also, is anyone else having this problem using WP Rocket? I’m wondering if there’s a conflict?

So far, it appears to have worked.

I get about 30-50 spam ~5 non-spam comments/day. Since reverting to 8.5.3, I’ve not had anything flagged incorrectly, whereas running 9.0 (by the time I noticed the false positives), 90% of non-spam comments were being flagged incorrectly.

Edit: I am using WP Rocket (with both versions). 3.11.0.5

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by turbodb.

It looks like the combination of WP Rocket and WP Cerber newer than 8.5.3 causes false positives. Can you run tests and confirm that false positives start occurring if you install WP Cerber 8.5.5.

@turbodb

I’m not a huge fan of this given that I’m running a production site here, but I will try to give it a go for a week or so.

@gioni

OK, so I need to make a correction. In my post above (https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/false-positives-20/#post-15714548) where I stated I was rolling back to 8.5.3, I actually rolled back to 8.9.3

I have not had any issues with 8.9.3 and WP-Rocket. And, when I was looking through the changelogs, it looked to me like the anit-spam changes started happening around 8.9.5 (which is why I rolled back to the version I selected).

@gioni – would you like me to try 8.9.5, or is there something specific to 8.5.5 that you’re thinking of that makes the 8.5.3 -> 8.5.5 transition special.

For now, since I had a typo above, I’m holding off on any changes to my production site.

I’ll roll back my site and help with the testing too. Just let me know which version you’d like me to use.

@turbodb – Thanks so much for the roll back idea. I’m using Cerber 8.9.3 and am getting the first comments I’ve had in about a month.

@gioni – When I started this ticket I was on 8.9.6. So the conflict with WP Rocket started at 8.9.4, 8.9.5 or 8.9.6. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help narrow this down.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by mperry8304.

@gioni I’m not using WP Rocket, but my site does have WP Fastest Cache, which seems like maybe it’s triggering the same thing? Timeframe feels like it would match with @mperry8304’s account – so perhaps some strange interaction between Cerber’s antispam and caching plugins in general?

We are having the same issue after updating CERBER to 9.0 and WordPress to 6.0. Lots of legitimate form submission on both Gravity Forms and Calendra seem to get marked as SPAM. We have even whitelisted the correct queries in the anti spam engine.

@liamsmartnumbers It seems like a lot of people with this issue are using a caching plugin. Do you have one and if so, what type?

@mperry8304 We have litespeed cache installed on 200+ websites.

However, I disabled on 3 of these websites to run tests. CERBER still blocked gravity forms from submitting and marked it as SPAM submissions.

I have now rolled back the version of CERBER to see if these makes a difference over the next few days.

The only other scenario that I need to test is the WordPress 6.0 update which we had around the same time this started happening.

@liamsmartnumbers Thanks for the info. I’m also on WP 6.0. Rolling back to Cerber 8.9.3 did the trick for me. Of course using old software is not ideal, but it’s giving us some time. Maybe Cerber will find a fix.

Hi folks! Please run tests and confirm that false positives start occurring if you use WP Cerber 8.9.5. It is the next version after 8.9.3. You can download older versions from this page: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-cerber/advanced/

@turbodb