Twitter Helped Fight Spam Comments
This morning when I opened my email, I noticed something very strange. There were quite a few comments awaiting moderation for Buzzing with Ange which were made up of a random 16 character string of spam. Now who doesn’t hate spam? Unfortunately, it’s all part of life for a blogger and something we have to deal with on a daily basis.
spam comment
Shortly after this, @tyropearl twittered that she had received 30+ spam comments in the last hour! The reason I noticed is because she included the IP addresses from the spammer. As it turns out, the IP addresses she listed were the same as the ones I received… and we weren’t the only ones.
http://twitter.com/tyropearl/status/1003226262
Imagine our surprise when 8 other tweeters that I know of also responded with having the same issue!
What happened next was that we were redirected to LinkBuildr who was on the ball and shared a post on how to block this IP address originating from Amsterdam through using the .htaccess file. You can follow the links to tutorials he posted from his site.
Twitter saved the day in my opinion. The community on Twitter have a great camaraderie and there’s always someone willing and able to help. Thank you to my fellow tweeters for helping me find a solution to something that could have eaten up my day!
Feel free to share if you were hit too and found the solution useful.
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Thanks for the mention Ange! I just woke up to 10 new comments on my post and well over 200 unique visitors searching for the cause of the spam via Google. So needless to say this guy is striking a nerve with people all over the web. Thanks for helping get the word out! I was a little alarmed that Askimet wasn’t filtering the spam so quickly so perhaps this guy’s spambot is a little more advanced.
@Linkbuildr -
Hey Linkbuildr, thankyou for posting instructions on how to block those IP addresses. Obviously, the spammer did hit a nerve and very scary that Akismet wasn’t capturing them. As a community we can help each other solve these mishaps when they happen.
Don’t you hate spam to?