Huge spam increase

[samh]

Recently we've observed a ridiculous influx in comment spam - interestingly though, not splogs (although we have an additional anti-splog plugin installed for that)

We use WP-Spamfree for all our bloggers, yet one has mentioned that the spam filter is too strong and it's stopping genuine people from commenting. This same user has had over 22,000 spam comments blocked by WP-SF.

Is there anything that we can do to tighten security without using a captcha. Although I understand it's probably the only remaning solution, I know for sure that most of our big blogger wouldn't be happy with having one on their comment forms. Also interesting fro this particular user is that people from Canada particularly struggle commenting on his blog....or accessing his blog at all. Which is very weird.

Cheers guys!

One extra point that may be of note, we've recently moved server from dedicated to cloud. Long story.

[Ipstenu]

Bad Behavior comes to mind (and Akismet obviously).

Cloud shouldn't matter :)

[samh]

I recall using BB in the past, will dig it out again - should that replace WP-SF or compliment it?

[andrea_r]

Also interesting fro this particular user is that people from Canada particularly struggle commenting on his blog....or accessing his blog at all. Which is very weird.

It's possible some Canadian IP addresses are being blocked.

One extra point that may be of note, we've recently moved server from dedicated to cloud.

If the spammers are already crawling that particular cloud.... then yes they will hit you harder. Butliek Ipstensu said, it;s not the fact it;s a cloud that's the issue.

[samh]

Andrea, could the canadian IP addresses being blocked be due to the spam protection we already have? (assuming they are being blocked that is!)

[Ipstenu]

BB should compliment WP-SF and Akismet.

I have spammers come and go. I made a post about weather and got nailed recently. No rhyme or reason as far as I can tell.

[andrea_r]

Andrea, could the canadian IP addresses being blocked be due to the spam protection we already have? (assuming they are being blocked that is!)

Yes, that was my point. What's his address, I can try & comment.

[Otto]

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...-for-comments/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...ck-validation/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

Install those three plugins. Set them up. Be happy.

I have not found any combination of plugins that do the job better.

[samh]

The address is http://salutsunderland.com - it's being domain mapped currently

People from canada have complained that not only can they not comment, but when they access his homepage or any article they also get a 'Whoops...' message

Something is amiss here and I cannot get to the bottom of it!!

@otto - thank you for those suggestions, we'll certainly trial them together. As it goes, the Bad Behaviour plugin has already blocked a good 120 attempts in a day. Dunno if that seems high?

I also read this about Wp-SpamFree

"It also does not block spambots when they scrape your site looking for your comment forms, nor block denial of service attacks. Indeed, under a heavy spam attack, its size and CPU usage could cause limited web hosting resources to be exhausted."

I wonder if that could also have anything to do with limited access for some users?

Cheers guys!

[samh]

@otto - just another thing, a couple of those plugins are not compatible with 3.0. Are you using 3.0