Mon 13 Feb 2006
Fun with comment spammers..
Posted by Steven under Internet Oddities, Technology
Ah… the sheer joy of it all.
Whilst my anti-spam measures have been working just fine, I decided i’d take it to the next level.
So I moved my real wp-comments-post.php to a new location (updating my wp theme to match) and replaced the real file with a honey pot version.
At first it just logged the spammers request to a file (see http://www.herod.net/spam), but I’ve just modified it to write back a nice surprise for the spammer
A 47MB zip file.
It seems to work just fine, I had two spams turn up in the honey pot whilst I watched, but the http logs didn’t record the hit until they had downloaded the two files, it would have at least slowed them down a little.
Hopefully I won’t run out of bandwidth (I have 1.6TB available) or have my hosting company puke at me. We’ll see how I go 
March 24th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Thanks for providing the pass math plug!
April 1st, 2006 at 5:06 am
Let’s beat those spammers!!! Yeah!
April 4th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
Nice idea - I wonder, maybe you could save your server’s bandwith by using mod_rewrite and proxy the request to wp-comments-post.php to some huge file on archive.org?
April 6th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Thanks for the anti-spam plugin!
Love it
April 7th, 2006 at 3:23 am
Going straight on my blog, thank you very much!
Love the maths idea, maybe you could try grammar and/or spelling next to annoy all those people who can’t write to save their lives? lol!
April 10th, 2006 at 3:26 am
Just what I needed, thanks.
April 16th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Thanks a ton for the plugin. At first it didnt seem to work - I couldn’t see anything at all, and then I realised that I needed to log out to see it!
Though not that familiar with PHP it was pretty simple to get it going. I had tried all kinds of anti-spam solutions within wordpress but was getting quite bogged down… hoping the dont manage to get around this one! 
April 20th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
Thanks for a good antispam plugin DYPM.
I’ve some problem about this DYPM. When DYPM installed, I can’t receive any trackback from other blogs. How can I use DYPM with receiving trackbacks.
Have a good time..
April 25th, 2006 at 2:01 am
I have just added the plug in to my blog. I’ve been swamped for months getting THOUSANDS a day. My blog was becoming a downer instead of fun. This should help. Thank you so much!
May 1st, 2006 at 4:43 am
Hey,, I like the idea to give them the huge file.
How about use mod_rewrite and send the the huge file from some download server like redhat iso file or something.
May 2nd, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Heh heh. That’s hilarious. I love it.
Another fellow writes back to as many spammers as possible:
http://www.spamletters.com/
Good reads!
May 24th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Hi Herod!
Thx for a great plugin. But i tried supplying a wrong math answer, and it rightfully rejected my comment - but it still counted my attempt at the frontpage. The post displying that there is 6 comments, when there is only five? Something you know about?
Look here: http://www.emtekaer.dk/index.php/2006/05/21/anti-spam/
May 24th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
Thanx for this useful plugin,… is there anywhere a list of IPs from previous spammers?
May 25th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
The mis-counting of comments is a known issue, someone submitted a fix I need to put into the next version.
No, there is no way of getting a list of IP’s from previous spammers, although it could probably be done…
May 27th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
When will you fix the comment numbering error? I would not have installed the plug-in if I knew it did this - but now it’s too late and I have a number of ghost comments listed. Please tell me you’ll add this fix VERY SOON NOW, or I’ll have to find another spam blocking solution.
Steven’s comment:
Be polite, I’m under no obligation to assist you.
May 30th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
No, you’re not under any obligation, except that you should note such major bugs when you release a plug-in.
I had also reviewed and promoted your plug-in at the bloggingblog.org, so if there’s no fix posted soon I’ll have to post an ammendment to that article saying that the plug-in is no good because of this bug.
Having a developer be responsive to your concerns instead of dismissive is also a nice plus.
Steven says:
I sent you a beta of version 3.0 which fixes this issue three days ago, (I would like to point out - within 5 hours of your comment), I have just resent another revision to you now.
June 3rd, 2006 at 3:43 am
Just brought up WordPress yesterday, installed DYPM today, and it seems to work when the math is correct. When the math answer is wrong, it produces a page that looks like this:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'select count() from wp_comments where comment_post_id = 3 and comment_approved ' at line 1]
update wp_posts set comment_count = (select count() from wpcomments where commentpostid = 3 and commentapproved = ‘1′) where ID = 3
Sorry, it seems you didn’t pass math!!
I’m new to SQL, can someone help?
Steven says:
What version of MySql are you using? I suspect the update statement using a sub-query isn’t supported in that version of MySql, if you let me know, I’ll investigate further. I suspect you’ll be the first of many who might start to encounter this
June 5th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
I am also encountering the same problem as John. Mysql version 4.0.24-10sarge2
Steven says:
This has been fixed in 3.1, I no longer use a sub-query
June 8th, 2006 at 8:58 am
THANKS!!
I just sorted through 6000 spam comments. You are saving my life!
February 19th, 2007 at 6:52 am
Is this honey pot file available to us? Or was it just your private revenge >;)
May 31st, 2007 at 8:05 am
Many thanks for the plugin.
May 31st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Like the idea of sending the reply, I did something equally petty once when a friend of mine was threatened on MSN, I wrote a php script that emailed him 1000 times with a warning message saying “We know who you are”.
My finger slipped a few times when pressing the browser refresh button so his hotmail inbox would have been rather full I imagine.