Comment spam

[DeadKenny]

Just finally got round to updating to EE2 and 2.02. Everything's gone fine except I've now discovered there are over 700 spam comments dating back months.

For some reason under 1.5 RC4 I never saw these comments so assumed there wasn't any.

Anyway, is there an easy way I can delete the lot? I'm not sure if there are any genuine comments in there but on a quick look it seems they're all spam. Problem is the comment editor seems to not have a select or delete all option, except for unaproved comments, but these have all been marked approved.

Other than that, is there anything I can do to reduce spam? Turning on comment approval just means potentially hundreds to filter through especially if I don't often check. Guess I could just turn off comments though. I tend to use flickr for feedback anyway.

[wkitty42]

in the admin editor, on the left in the PHOTOS section, there's link to "comments and ratings"... click on it, then put a checkmark in the delete box for all those you want removed... when you get to the bottom of the page, click on the really wide SAVE button and those marked for deletion will be wiped away ;)

[DeadKenny]

Problem is, I have 726 to delete. That's a lot of checkboxes!

[wkitty42]

best get to work, then ;)

seriously, though... yes, that's a lot and i'm sure there is an outside method of cleaning them up but i don't know what would be the easiest or best for you... i'd see about using phpadmin if it were me but messing around in the raw databases can cause problems if one isn't careful...

one thing, though, i'll bet that you check your guestbook and comments section more often ;) ;) ;)

[DeadKenny]

I've disabled guestbook and comments for now to stop the flood :D. I might keep it that way as I prefer to use Flickr for feedback and EE for a more detailed archive of my photos.

[wkitty42]

you might want to rename those php files, too... even if they are not visually seen in the pages, they are still there and the spammers go directly to them anyway instead of looking at the pages and then clicking on them ;)

[Pekka]

This has worked really well for me:

$s_comment_submit_stopwords = array(" soma "," cock ","viagra", "v i a g r a", "[", ".org", ".net", ".com", ".info", "Lottery", ".html", ".php", "URL]");

[wkitty42]

pekka, where would that be put? in the config file??

[Pekka]

There is a line in basecode/SETUP_settings.php for it. You can edit it manually or via editor. Backup it first!

Most spammers want to put website address, so above denies that. They also use BBCODE which is also denied.

One thing I'll need to put to todo list: add a log for rejected comments and guestbooks and why it was rejected.

[DeadKenny]

Cheers. I'll give it a go.

Really my problem stems from comments that have probably occurred during the older 1.5 version. I'll just have to use phpmyadmin I think to clear them out if I can work out what to delete without trashing everything.

[Pekka]

Cheers. I'll give it a go.

Really my problem stems from comments that have probably occurred during the older 1.5 version. I'll just have to use phpmyadmin I think to clear them out if I can work out what to delete without trashing everything.

1.5 did not have spam prevention at all.

You can delete rows from "ee_exhibition_feedback" and "ee_photo_comment" safely. If you want to limit deletion to newer comments use WHERE clause:

DELETE FROM
ee_photo_comment
WHERE
ee_photo_comment_id > '200'

or

DELETE FROM
ee_photo_comment
WHERE
ee_photo_comment_timestamp > '2007-09-10 01:55:00'