how to block spam comments (from Online poker)

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I can’t even delete these comments. What the heck does this mean?

Online-poker turned it up a notch. I added “poker” to my list of moderated words. When he was posting 1 – 2 spams a day, that worked well.
Now “online-poker” is posting 25 an hour. None of them get displayed because of the word “poker”, but my moderation panel is completely filled with these “awaiting moderation”. We’re talking 200 since last night.

Here’s another alternative:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/3/15521
This idea is based on the fact that the poker spammer dumps comments in for posts that may or may not exist.
macmanx – I disagree with your assertion that ” The only way to stop SPAM is to turn off your comments.” That simply isn’t true. As I said in a different thread, if some one is determined enough, they will get through. What you can do is to make is so difficult for them that they don’t bother. Between all of the items I have in place (the above hack, as well as BlackList – which I need to update) I’ve been reasonably secure from spam. Now, I have to admit, I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t been targeted, or if my security is adequate. Turning off comments just doesn’t cut it. That’s the point of blogging (for me at any rate) is to get feed back from my readers (as few as they are.) Honestly, there are a number of blogs I’ve stopped visiting because I couldn’t comment on their site. Sure, I could post the comment on my site and link back to them, but 1) It takes the comment out of context and 2) My site has a focus, and I try not to clutter it with non-related items.
TG

I’ll be looking into WPBlacklist as I used it with much success when using MovableType but I was hit for the first time today with the “poker” spam and managed to net all of it by having any comment with more than 2 links sent to Moderation.
It’s a bit annoying to have to manually delete things beneath my contempt but it works.

It’s still a bother to delete 30 comments from Moderation.

I am also having this problem I was using kitten’s spam words but it isn’t helping. I know I loved the blacklist in MT… I never got bothered. It just deleted that stuff and didn’t even put it in a qeue for moderation. =(
This is quite annoying.

if only moderation had an option to delete ALL comments rather than having to go through and click the radio button for all fifty, that would be good enough for me.
does anyone have a plugin that adds this?

Have a look at “Mass Edit Mode” which is within comments. you can either have View Mode or Mass Edit Mode.
I have started getting spam today and used Mass Edit Mode which allows you to do one tick to remove all.
cheers
Newby

so how is it that these spam bots find the wordpress distribution, i mean its not like o have it in a folder named ‘wordpress’

are you pinging anything after you post something?

urm dont think so. sorry i am new to wordpress but in discussion options the only things checked are ‘anyone posts comment’ and ‘A comment is approved or declined’

Sorry, it is a 404 error on the link to https://www.macmanx.com/wordpress/bad.txt – I tried a couple of variations but it just doesn’t find it.

Sorry about that, I pulled it earlier today. It’s back up at https://www.macmanx.com/wordpress/bad.txt with a new life span of seven more days.

Can I post without logging in?

Yep, sure can.
That’s the fundamental problem. WP needs to have an option to only allow posts from users who have registered and are logged in. Maybe it does, but I haven’t found it yet.
And on top of that it needs to have a email verification scheme (ie. you’re not really registered until you answer a randomly generated email link and confirm you are a real person). Addition measures like typing in a jumble of letters on obscure background may also be needed, but the basic registration confirm method should reduce the amount of spam by a huge amount.
If it doesn’t exist then I’ll work on it this weekend. I’m new to WordPress, having just changed over to it from my custom written system, but it looks very good so far — other than this spam problem.
Oh, btw, the reason why they find your posts is because the default is to alert the global pinger site when you post. Disable that and it should cut down somewhat (but that isn’t a good solution, better login handling is needed).
bcl
(editor of https://www.libertynews.org)