A couple of months ago I installed Brad Choate’s excellent SpamLookup MovableType plugin to help with the deluge of comment and trackback spam that was hitting some MT blogs that I run. It hasn’t completely stopped the spam for me in the way it has for some friends, but the amount of spam hitting MT-Blacklist is down to about one-seventh of previous levels, which means the amount reaching me is considerably down too.
Unfortunately, my home connection is an SBC-Yahoo DSL connection, with a dynamic IP address. My IP address recently changed to one that is currently on the DSBL lists, meaning that I can’t comment on those blogs from home without changing various settings. I’ve been trying to contact SBC Yahoo about the problem and on the second attempt their support team recognised the phrase “DSBL” but apparently didn’t read the rest of my message to notice that the problem isn’t with email settings.
DSBL-based filtering of comment spam is only going to be successful (even in the medium-term, I doubt it’s a long-term solution) if the ISPs are clued up. For now, it’s getting frustrating enough that I’m wondering about turning off the DSBL protections and deal with the onslaught that follows….
Tags: DSBL, SBC-Yahoo, SpamLookup
I use IP blocking as a way of blocking virus emails that keep arriving supposedly from stevelawson.net addresses – admin@ webmaster@ etc. I was getting loads til I put a discard filter on the three addresses that they were coming from. I suppose there’s always the chance that they were being sent from a dynamic address and I’ll end up blocking some wanted email, but the chances when we’re talking about about four IP numbers, as opposed to the thousands I’d guess were on the list for the trackback filter, are so tiny, I’m not going to worry just yet.