thita

@webvitaly, thanks for the explanation and for keeping such good care of this plugin. It is such an important tool for blogging. For the few days I was getting spam I was reminded how awful spamming was before I installed this plugin. And I really didn’t like Akismet; took up too much resources and bloated the database. Keep up the awesome work and thank you! ??

@webvitaly, for whatever it is worth, I did not get any more spam in the last 24 hours even without reverting back to 2.2. So it could very well be that (at least for me) the spam comments came though for a period of time because of not clearing the cache, and not because something was wrong with the plugin. I didn’t run into this before with previous updates, but perhaps it was a combination of not clearing the cache and whatever changes were done with the plugin that made it ineffective for a while. I do not know if this has been the issue for others as well, or something else also played part. Thanks for being on top of this. I really appreciate the great support. I just updated the plugin to 2.6 and this time I did clear the cache. ??

@jumbo I’m not a techy person, and don’t understand half of what you just said, but thought to mention that I had no problems with earlier versions of the plugin, and this seems to be the case for others as well. So whatever changed were made in the latest version is likely the culprit.

I would also like to add that I have not had any more spam comments today. I have had about 10 IPs flooding my website with spam. I had them blocked. Since then no new IPs have been trying to spam the site. It is too early to tell if they are just taking a break for the weekend or if the problem is solved.

One thing I was thinking (again, I’m not a tech-person, so pelase don’t laugh at me) is that notice in the comments above that at some point I discovered that for me the year box was visible for a while. @webvitaly suggested that I clear my CDN’s cache, which I did and that solved that problem. Is it possible that between the update and the time the cache was cleared the plugin was not working right because the cache was not cleared?

In regards to what @jumbo mentioned, I have threaded/nested comments enabled on all of my pages/posts, and I still started getting spam after the recent update, so there is probably more to it. I’m in touch with @webvitaly and will switch back to 2.2 when I get back home, but I thought to mention this in case it helps.

I just sent you a message. ??

Yep, spam still coming through. Just got another one. I will give this version of Anti-Spam a couple of more days then revert back to the earlier version, give it a week, and write a comparison update.

Okay, that worked. I cleared the catche and now the date is no longer visible. At least that problem is solved. Now back to spam comments coming through. I deleted the ones I got overnight, and will continue monitoring the site to see what happens.

Oh! I see what’s happening! The year box is now visible! What’s going on? How to fix this?

Why is this issue marked as resolved? It hasn’t been resolved at all. Still going on. Just got 61 spam comments overnight. I haven’t had any spam comments for a couple of years since I first installed this plugin! This clearly has to do with the latest update. It seems like we will have to roll back to the earlier version. ??

Yep, same here. Ever since I updated I have been getting a bunch of spam. Previous version worked wonderfully and never got any spam through. Now it is like every 30 minutes! And the spam comments are very obvious ones. Please fix this! Something obviously got broken from the last version. ??

Janis, I sent you some links via PM. Thanks for looking into this. ??

Janis, thanks for the suggestion. I’m contacting one of the person’s who’s links show up as broken and see if there is an issue with them inadvertedly blocking my server’s IP addresses. I will report back as soon as I find out.

This person is a friend (not a techy person either) and we were discussing the broken links the other day. They asked me if I would write another promotional post higlighting their services. I told them I would be happy to do so, however all their links show up as broken. The point is I know this person didn’t block my IPs intentionally.

Now the question would be, why would their server block my server’s IPs? Is the plugin making too many requests? I have the original settings which is to check links every 72 hours, so that doesn’t seem to be the case. Anyway, I will wait to hear back from them and let you know…

Janis, okay, I did as you suggested above and clicked on the Unknown Error status (didn’t realise you could do that to get extra info). Anyway, it says: Log:Empty reply from server [Error #52]
=== (No response) ===

Again, there is nothing wrong with these websites. They load quickly with no isses, and in fact, clicking on the supposedly broken link takes you to the site just fine. There is no redirect, there is no time-out, nothing.

I don’t know if this helps. I’m not a tech person and I have no idea what error #52 means.

I have the same issue. If I remember correctly it stated with the last update. Links that are correct getting the Unknown Error message. I see no colloration between the reported links. They are to various websites/homepages. I have checked and rechecked and replaced the links many times and it still shows up as broken with the Unknown Error as the status. Please fix this. I don’t want to just ignore the links because if they go broken in the future I won’t be notified.

To Janis, to answer your last question, that is the actual status code: Unknown Error

UPDATE: I have thought to update this as the findings of my tech-person were interesting. The issue was NOT with the plugin. In WP 3.8.1 if you add the word “ass” to the moderated words list under the Discussion settings in the WP dashboard, this will put all comments with smileys under moderation. It is possible that this was true with earlier versions of WP as well, but I added to word to my list of moderated word recently so I don’t know. A strange WP bug indeed…