Google, Wordpress, and Spammers
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My employer has a blog. It normally gets a few spam comments a week. Recently, though, the spammers have been having a field day.
That's just today - there were ~93 yesterday as well.
Let's count the WTFs:
- Wordpress either doesn't have some form of flood control or my employer turned it off
- Google's WTF email deletion policy. For a while, the webmail client didn't have a delete button. "Who needs to delete when you can archive?" The mobile app is similar in that you cannot select all->delete. You must manually click the tiny check box next to each email in series and then press delete, assuming you don't accidentally open half of the emails.
- Spammers still believe that Wordpress comments are automatically posted.
- Spammers still try posting links to Wordpress even though all links are automatically "ref=nofollow".
- My employer has moderation requests automatically sent to every single person who works here even though none of us have the credentials to do anything about it.
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You're going to love the updated mobile app. It takes care of having to click a checkbox to delete.
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RE: updated mobile app
What the crap? Who thought this was a good idea? Or did thinking not take place?From the "About Gmail" screen in the app: "Gmail is built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful. And maybe even fun."Being unable to select multiple emails is now intuitive, efficient, and useful.I retract my previous complaint. Swiping messages to the right to delete, while apparently undocumented, is much quicker.I retract my retraction of my complaint. Swipe-to-delete only works when you search for specific mails. In the default inbox view, swipe archives.
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@Kaulesh said:
- Wordpress either doesn't have some form of flood control or my employer turned it off
- Google's WTF email deletion policy. For a while, the webmail client didn't have a delete button. "Who needs to delete when you can archive?" The mobile app is similar in that you cannot select all->delete. You must manually click the tiny check box next to each email in series and then press delete, assuming you don't accidentally open half of the emails.
- Spammers still believe that Wordpress comments are automatically posted.
- Spammers still try posting links to Wordpress even though all links are automatically "ref=nofollow".
- My employer has moderation requests automatically sent to every single person who works here even though none of us have the credentials to do anything about it.
Spambots don't check against a database to see if spamming a form will be worthwhile- why would they bother? They just spider the web looking for <form> tags, insert URLs into all the fields within, submit, and move on. The majority of the time, the form doesn't even submit anywhere, it just returns search results or something equally useless to spam.
TRWTF is that CAPTCHAs appear to no longer be effective. I have older reCAPTCHA-protected forms that are now getting spammed heavily. I initially thought there was a bug or something that let them bypass it, but no, apparently outsourced human CAPTCHA-solving services have simply become cheap enough that they are no longer an effective barrier.
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@Kaulesh said:
Let's count the WTFs:
- You can't fucking spell WordPress even though it's spelled correctly in your screenshot fifteen bajillion times.
- Someone either deleted or disabled the bundled antispam plugin
- You think "ref=nofollow" does the same thing as rel="nofollow"
- Your employer gave you a WordPress account with no permissions
- GMail apparently thinks the emails you keep deleting without reading are important (unless yellow arrow-box-thing has multiple meanings)
- You've never seen GMail on a computer, or your company has no computers and hosts their WordPress installation on a cell phone
- You delete the spam instead of marking it as spam
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@Ben L. said:
@Kaulesh said:
Let's count the WTFs:
- You can't fucking spell WordPress even though it's spelled correctly in your screenshot fifteen bajillion times.
- Someone either deleted or disabled the bundled antispam plugin
- You think "ref=nofollow" does the same thing as rel="nofollow"
- Your employer gave you a WordPress account with no permissions
- GMail apparently thinks the emails you keep deleting without reading are important (unless yellow arrow-box-thing has multiple meanings)
- You've never seen GMail on a computer, or your company has no computers and hosts their WordPress installation on a cell phone
- You delete the spam instead of marking it as spam
Cool it, jackass. Who pissed in your Cheerios today?
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@Kaulesh said:
Who pissed in your Cheerios today?
Everyone who told him the truth about Go, that's who…
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I'm glad I don't have to use the new Gmail app because my phone is crippled with Android 2.2!
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@movzx said:
You're going to love the updated mobile app. It takes care of having to click a checkbox to delete.
The god-awful-hideous avatar box thing isn't a checkbox, but it behaves exactly the same.
