Tag: spam
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56 posts · All tags
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What did the LinkedIn Hack mean for end users?
Thinking back of the year 2012, the 5th of july I have to think of the hack that happened against LinkedIn . For anyone who missed the big news, feel free to catch up on Wikipedia . But why am I thinking of that stuff...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.8.0 - Beta 1
Quite some time passed, since I really looked into the code for ironing out bugs and added features, but honestly - there is no need to do much, as the plugin works pretty smooth. But nevertheless I did some changes t...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.7.1
WP-BlackCheck 2.7.1 is out - it's mostly a bump to satisfy the next Wordpress version. The Changes so far: Stop messing around with Akismet stats - Who used that anyways? Opening all of the options at the settings pan...
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PHP Upgrade
Today I had to upgrade my PHP version to 5.5 as version 5.4 is getting older. So there will be some small problems with some services here as I have to adapt some of the code pieces used. Sorry for the inconvenience d...
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Starvation
My mailserver got some nice features to fight spam. One of them is the well known filter SpamAssassin , being the last line of defense here. In theory, a nifty setup, if you kill quite some spam and leave the rest to...
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Where does the spam come from?
My Blacklist is doing fine since about quite some time and I was expiring ancient spam adresses. So after having a clean list again, it's time to have a look at the stats - in other words, where does the spam come fro...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.7.0 is ready for you
The new WP-BlackCheck Version is ready. That's the changes so far: Implement redirection of spammers (i.e. send them to the fbi website) Implement comment hash checking for repeated spam Increase HTTP Timeout for Web-...
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419-Scam jetzt schon via Skype
Wieder einmal zeigt sich, dass Trickbetrüger im Netz kein Pardon kennen und es überall versuchen. Auch bei mir. Wie das abläuft, sieht dann so aus (URLs, Mailadressen und Telefonnummern wurden anonymisiert): Nach der...
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Thinking about comment spam again
It's a fact that I don't have much spam here since WP-BlackCheck pretty much kills it all, but as I am just one user among many out there, I'd like to know if I miss some kind of spam on your end or which bugs you fou...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.6.2
This version fixes a bug with known comment authors which I overlooked last release.
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WP-BlackCheck 2.6.1
A new version of WP-BlackCheck is out - once again. The changes are more or less just a few cosmetic fixes: Add counter for reported IPs Fix bar graph text issue New Webservice URL
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Albanian translation for WP-BlackCheck
It was quite a pleasant surprise when I checked my mails and found a message where someone offered help on my Wordpress Plugin WP-BlackCheck: Taulant Ceka sent me the albanian translation, which I'm cheerfully adding...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.6.0
Spam changed - mostly the trackback and pingback stuff started to get annoying - maybe a sign of the upcoming vacations? The situation on site here forced me to adapt my plugin. The changes so far: Fix of the Update N...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.5.1
The last version had a small bug which I did overlook. However - it's corrected now.
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BlackCheck Stats
It's been quite a while since I started to work with some statistics about what my plugin does, observing the kind of spam being blocked and it's been quite cool to see: Most of the spammers are posting way too fast a...
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WP-BlackCheck Preview
After having to suffer a nice spam attack against this blog serving about 3000 comments per hour, my Blacklist started to grow and I did wreck my braincells about some ideas on how to make my plugin a little more effe...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.4.0 released
The new version of my Plugin just got committed and that's the changelog: Update notification optional - you can switch nagging off Known Problems got renamed to FAQ E-Mail Notification for new Spam - a rather hackish...
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The future of WP-BlackCheck
At the moment, the current version of the Plugin kills quite some spam here - in fact, I am Spam-Free since months now. But there are things like IPv6 floating around, which need to be taken care of. In terms of progr...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.3.0 released
After talking to Chris I did wreck my braincells again, to find some ideas to improve WP-BlackCheck to make spammers life harder. The Result is the new version 2.3.0 which contains the following changes: Type rate cal...
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Ciao, Akismet!
This is a short report about the happenings around WP-BlackCheck. The Blacklist itself just entered the 40000th IP address to the list. By now I am test-driving the new version to be to find the latest bugs and elimin...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.2.2 released
After a local test run of WP-BlackCheck Version 2.2, I decided to say it's safe for global usage.. The highlights of this version are: Update notifications Checking for Requirements Purging of old comments Some langua...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.1.0 released
After working with WP-BlackCheck Version 2.0, I had a couple of new ideas and corrections to be applied to the plugin which made me release Version 2.1.0 by now. The highlights of this version are: Reset to factory de...
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WP-BlackCheck 2.0.0 released
The new version number of my plugin indicates, that a big thing happened: WP-BlackCheck speaks foreign languages now. Other changes were minor changes under the hood to keep things smooth.
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WP-BlackCheck 1.12 released
Just a quick note about my plugin again: WP-BlackCheck 1.12 has just been released. Changes happened mostly 'under the hood' to improve the code.
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WP-BlackCheck 1.11 released
WP-BlackCheck 1.11 is my latest work here, adapting to the current spam situation of my blog. Due to much trackback spam, some improvements were done here too. Another check about link-counts got implemented. Please g...
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WP-BlackCheck 1.10 released
As I spotted a few glitches in my code, I started to iron them out. While doing so I had one of my brighter moments which did lead to implementing new features to make the blog even more unattractive to spambots. Hope...
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WP-BlackCheck 1.9 released
This time, Version 1.9 of the WP-BlackCheck Plugin got released. This versions highlight is the implementation of an admin panel which enables you to toggle the display of statistics and the stack size of reported IPs...
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WP-BlackCheck 1.8 released
Reviewing my last version I spotted a few lines of code which could be considered as dead and a little bug which hammers the SQL server with a stupid query. As booth things - dead code and bugs - shouldn't be in a goo...
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WP-BlackCheck 1.7 released
After a few month now it's time to release the next version of my WP-BlackCheck Plugin. The changes made are not big as most of the work is done at the server side of mine. The first thing you might notice is an addit...
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News from the blacklist
Since I am running my blacklist to prevent spam on Wordpress Blogs, many days have passed and I was curious again of what happened behind the scenes and I did some statistics. IPs listed: 12005 IPs removed: 1 Users: 2...
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WP-BlackCheck Update
As Wordpress changed a few details in their API, I updated the WP-BlackCheck Plugin to reflect those. The current Version is now 1.5 which is available on wordpress.org
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Killing Spam
Let's have a look at one of my favorite topics today: E-Mail Spamfilters. They are a quite helpful tool for keeping the inbox clean as long as you don't fully trust their work. I know this sounds paradox, but what hap...
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Untrained Spamfilter Blues
I migrated my mailserver a few hours ago to a complete new system to have a better groupware solution and less noise. But honestly, I am already missing the old patchwork system as its spamfilter was working very very...
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Is WP-Blackcheck effective?
That was the basic question of the research I did during the last days, greping through the logs to find some info to get an impression of the blacklists effect. Now I know, it isn't in vain. If we'd say we have 10000...
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So eine Frechheit
Heute hab ich geglaubt, ich falle vom Hocker. Ob vor Lachen oder wegen der Frechheit der Spammer, die angeblich mein Mailkonto hosten. Das Mail als solches, wie folgt: \-- Dear Webmail Account User, This message was s...
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Spam or Virus?
Today I had one of those typical spam malware in my mailbox, showing that Microsoft Outlook is one of the most widely used mail programs, being attacked all the time: Microsoft Outlook Notification for the xxxx@xxxx.x...
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The blacklist again...
It is wonderful if you know that a plan is working - especially if it's your own one. Regarding the WP-Blackcheck plugin, it might even fot more here as I was observing less and less spam comments into the moderation...
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Is it me John Wayne, is it you?
Some spammers can really drive you mad - especially if they are doing things like that. Looking at my mailserver logs I have found some strange IP addresses like 123.27.3.81, 222.252.80.188 or 123.16.13.188 which are...
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WP-Blackcheck - Statusreport
My Blacklist service is running for quite a while now and it it's time to look at the result. Sure, it isn't much as not many people provided feedback by reporting the IPs, but for now we have collected about 60 IP Ad...
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WP-BlackCheck goes WP.org
During the last days I have sent out some preview versions of my plugin and got some feedback about the plugin which helped me getting things done. Due to the positive echo of various people, I am now posting it on wo...
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Together we're stronger
I was fed up with the comment spam again as it's me who has to check the akismet queue for false positives. So I have started preventing spam by doing various checks before handing the comment over to akismet - but it...
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Spam Attack
The start of the new year was quite a bad one: 931 comments are waiting for moderation. Quite much if you'd ask me. Having a closer look it wasn't the bikers gang fighting a flamewar on one of Grazer's postings - that...
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JSSpamBlock 2.1?
You might remember my ranting about the JSSpamBlock plugin of Paul Butler, thinking of porting it to the actual WP release . I have decided to keep an eye on it fixing various bugs for keeping it compatible. JSSpamBlo...
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JSSpamBlock is (really) dead now?
After Paul Butler's Announcement of the end of JSSpamBlock maintenance, I was not really worried about the plugin itself, as it still did its job in a perfect way. If you think back, there are enough unmaintained plug...
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Spam Beobachtungen
Seit mein Blog in neuem Design dasteht, nimmt erstaunlicherweise der Traffic darauf enorm zu - und damit leider auch das Aufkommen von Spam. Betroffen davon sind vorallem Beiträge, welche die Begriffe 'Gästebuch' oder...
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Gemeinsam gegen den Spam
Heute im Freenode hat sich eine witzige Sache Idee manifestiert: Gemeinsam Spam sammeln um die Spamfilter entsprechend trainieren zu können. Man hätte damit gleich bei Start eine nette Grundlage um dem Filter das Grun...
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Mailserver statistics
My mail system is running since quite a while now. So I was checking the statistics, generated from the log files of the last weeks for getting an overview of the current situation. Having 8 mails in my inbox means th...
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ORDB.org strikes back
I guess you know the ordb.org blacklisting service for mails - but did you know that it was taken offline long time ago? It did not report spammers since that time, but nevertheless many mailservers are still querying...
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Thanks a ton, asshole
I'm loving it. Some dumbass used my domain for dispatching his junkmails into the world. So all the bounced mails are piled into my mailbox. Since I've been using SPF, such things happened less often - but I guess it'...
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SQLgrey
I am using Greylisting since quite some time to keep malware away and I have to admit, it is a blessing: As many malware and spam programs do not respect the RFC, they just try to deliver their load just once - so the...
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Efficiency of my spamfilter
Is my Spamfilter doing a good job here? Does anybody out there got some values to compare? Here are some recent stats of my mailfilter (SpamAssassin with Bayes, more than 800 messages / day) Efficiency : 99.85% False...
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Mail Harvesting Made Easy
It is scary, how simple mail adresses are collected. I think we should have a closer look at how it might be done: Chain letters Chain letters are a wonderful way of collecting as they traveled a while until you get t...
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K(l)einholz
Nachdem mir mal jemand erklärt hat, was die Anderen von mir wollen, wenn sie mir ein sog. Stöckchen zuwerfen, habe ich beschlossen, dies zu verweigern. Warum? - Ihr erinnert euch doch sicher noch an die alten Kettenma...
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Canned meat in the mailbox
Since Monty Python , Spam is known to be annoying - but not limited to email. Even in real life the mailbox gets filled up if you do not have a 'insert ads in here and you will be sued to death'-sticker... But why is...
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Spamassassin for Webpages?
I think I should look for another hobby as having bad ideas and trying them out can be quite time intensive. But here is an idea I put to code lately. What is the best spam killer for free? Spamassassin. Can't we abus...
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Kampf dem Spam
Ich glaube, es gibt kaum jemanden, der nicht von Spam in seinem Blog, seinem Forum oder Ähnlichem geplagt wurde. So auch wieder einmal ich und ich. Abhilfe kann man sich vielerlei besorgen. Aber was greift wirklich? I...