Sorry about the spam

A particularly vicious spammer latched onto my blog this week. I’ll call it an IT because this spammer isn’t even selling anything. The URL attached to the myriad of names IT uses links to a Facebook verification page. So what the purpose of this attack is, I don’t know. But according to the WordPress forum, my blog is not the only one being attacked by this same spammer.

I know many of you have seen these fake comments pop up in your WordPress dashboard or been notified by email that someone has responded to a legitimate comment you made on my blog. I’m sorry about that. WordPress uses a spam blocker called Askimet, which until this onslaught, has worked extremely well—and actually still is. In the last seven hours, IT posted 193 spam comments on my blog, but Askimet only missed 25 of those. Apparently, they’re  coming in so fast Askimet just can’t keep up.

I thought I had IT stopped by using the first part of the IT’s fake ID in a Comment Blacklist “block”, but early this morning IT launched a new onslaught again. I woke up this morning to those 25 new spam comments that got through Askimet and posted on my blog.

To keep my blog from being cluttered up with these nasty things, I’ve temporarily turned on comment moderation—which I hate. Hopefully, IT will get bored with my blog and move on soon.