Thursday, December 6, 2007

Blocked from your own blog

Many blogs, including this little blog, used a plugin called Bad Behavior.

What it does is keep known spammers away.

Well, for a while this week, it was keeping several people from their own blogs. Including this little blog.

There are many different ways of preventing spam on blogs. And that's because there are many different ways of spamming blogs.

Comment spam is comments that are for the purpose, not of commenting on a post, but to use your Web space to advertise the junk they're selling.

There's another kind of comment spam that, while not selling anything, is still unrelated to your post. Those are usually attempts to find out how successful their attempts to spam are.

Sort of like the Verizon guy that says "Can you hear me now?" He's got nothing to say, just making sure he can get a message through, when he's ready to send his message.

Those spammers with the "innocent" comments, like "Really like your post. Cool!" and such, are trying out spam methods. And, if they get through, will bombard you with spam.

There's also TrackBack spam. That's when people post links to their Web sites in the TrackBack section of your blog. Similar to comment spam, just stored different.

Sometimes TrackBack spammers will link to your blog. Sometimes not. Either way, they are spamming you.

A variation of that is the aggregate spammers. It's a form of TrackBack spam where they set up a site just for advertising. They don't post anything. Instead, they take excerpts from blogs, put them on their blog or Web site, link to the various sites, and send TrackBack spam.

Those aggregate spammers are trying to use your blog to drive traffic to their site that's not a real blog.

I don't like any of them.

And that's why I use different methods of blocking spam.

I'm a paid user of Akismet. Yes, Akismet is free. But I'm a supporter of their product.

I'm also a paid user of Spam Karma 2. Yes, it's free, too. But I use ... and support ... Dr. Dave's product.

And, I'm a paid user of Bad Behavior. Yes, it's free. But, like the others, I use ... and support ... Michael Hampton's product.

They all use different methods of blocking, removing, or preventing spam.

And, this week, Bad Behavior broke.

It locked many, many folks from their blogs.

Including me.

And Michale Hampton.
In brief, yesterday I moved all of my sites to a new dedicated server. In the process, I decommissioned an old blacklist I was running which I thought wasn't being used, not realizing that Bad Behavior was still set to use it. Shortly afterward, I found myself locked out of my own blog, just as you all did.

So, if it happened to you, you know know why.

I had to log on to my server through a back-end interface, then physically remove the Bad Behavior plugin. Then I could log on to my blog.

The problem has been identified ... and fixed. And, if you use Bad Behavior, you should do what I'm doing: updating Bad Behavior.

8 comments:

  1. Maybe it is spam from your new car ...

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  2. So the mystery is solved! Bad Behaviour didn't like my comment I was going to make yesterday on your OnStar article. :)

    I really like Don's assessment better, though. LOL!

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  3. In one way it's unfortunate that the tech constantly changes and we have to spend extra time "keeping up." On the other hand, what are our options? Hunt down every living spammer and beat them to death with their own modems? Hmm... I kinda like that option.

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  4. I'll hold them while you wale on them. Then we swap off.

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  5. I had come over to wish you a Happy Blogoversary, so as not to forget tomorrow, so, Happy Blogoversary!

    And what do I find, but kick azz info. I got locked out of Pirate's Cove, couldn't even log in. Had to delete BB from the FTP. Couldn't comment at PC or any other blog using BB. Strangely, I could log in at American Flag League, I guess cause I had an old version of BB.

    Going to try uploading new BB. WP 2.3 is hating on Spam Karma 2, and tired of deleting 45 spam TB's every hour.

    Thanks again, Basil, and happy 3rd!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Happy Blogiversary basil! You've only been blogging for three years??? That's not right, it seems you've been around longer than that! Anyway, happy blogiversary.

    http://www.brightandearlyblog.com/todays-blogiversaries/

    ReplyDelete
  7. [...] but not least, for anyone having issues with Bad Behavior on their own site (I did), Basil explains the issue and how to [...]

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