Trackback spam – oh no, not again!

  • exilefromgroggs

    (@exilefromgroggs)


    17 years, 1 month ago

    More stuff about trackbacks, I’m afraid – if it wasn’t for trackbacks my wordpress life would be bliss!

    My hack to stop spam registrations works perfectly – I never have any of those – and comments are limited to registered users, so I don’t have spam comments. However …

    Trackback is switched off in the relevant options page (Options/Discussion DESELECTED “Allow link notifications”). But trackbacks are still getting through. Yes, I know this is well-worn ground. I’m hoping to add to it.

    Comment_status and ping_status for all posts are being set to “Open” – even though trackbacks are off. When an individual post is displayed, the “postmetadata alt” style is used with a longer message (from attachment.php in the template file), that includes trackback details, and the comment_status and ping_status flags are referenced rather than the trackback status. This means that a trackback address is made available, even though in principle trackbacks ought to be inhibited. I wonder whether those individual posts accessible from the front page of my blog (events pages) are then being picked up by trackback spambots which fire a trackback – and whether for some reason this goes through?

    I have more exploring to do on this, but I think I’m moving towards getting to grips with the problem.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    17 years, 1 month ago

    Why do people always do things the hard way?

    Bad Behavior
    Akismet

    Install them. Then re-enable comments and such, because *they work*. It’s just that simple. I get 300+ spams per day. Of those, about 20-30 make it through Bad Behavior. Of those, Akismet catches 99.99% of them. Perhaps 1 spam actually gets through the gauntlet per month.

    No work.
    No hassle.
    No maintenance needed.
    And I still can have anonymous comments enabled.

    Stop going to such great lengths and make “your WordPress life bliss” by using the right tools for the right tasks.

    Thread Starter exilefromgroggs

    (@exilefromgroggs)

    17 years, 1 month ago

    Actually, I tried using akismet, but the authorisation code I got from WordPress didn’t work. I wasted several hours wrestling with it before giving up.

    Since I don’t have a problem with comments, only trackbacks – can akismet inhibit trackback spam? I understood that it didn’t, which was one of the reasons for not chasing it more eagerly.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    17 years, 1 month ago

    Yes, it stops trackback spam as well.

    I don’t know why you’d have a problem with the API key. It always works first try for me. I just go to my wordpress.com account, go to Users->Your Profile and there it is. Enter it on the Akismet page (on my own domain) and voila. Instant gratification.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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