Several people have e-mailed me this week to tell me that they’ve been prevented from commenting on my blog because of an error. It looks a little like this:
Error 403
We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /blog/wp-comments-post.php on this server.Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.
Your technical support key is: 123a-b456-7890-12cd
This error is generated by Bad Behavior, a software product that I use to prevent bots from posting spam in the comments. (Bad Behavior reports that it’s blocked 697 such attempts in the past week alone, making it well worth the trouble, in my estimation.) Sometimes humans are accidentally blocked by Bad Behavior.
If you find yourself unable to comment, please find out your IP address and e-mail it to me, along with a note explaining that you’ve found yourself blocked from posting comments. I will add your address to the whitelist so that you can post again.
My apologies to those affected. But, hey, it’s better than deleting 100 spam comments each day. And, FWIW, Bad Behavior is a great product and I recommend it highly for anybody with a WordPress blog in need of spam filtering. It’s free, but if you find it useful, be sure to contribute a few bucks to its creator.
This is the one I had about ten days ago, Waldo. I didn’t know whether you realized it was 403 and not another one, like 412 or whatever.
I use Akismet to filter spam from ham, and it does a wonderful job. Sure, it is an external, centralized service, but that’s probably what it takes to get such high-quality detection. (It is free for non-commercial use.) I’ve never had a false positive (valid comment marked as spam), and I only get a false negative (spam that isn’t caught) once a week.
By the way, if the Akismet service goes down, I think the plugin automatically throws everything into the moderation queue.
I’ve wondered how well Akismet works. I should give it a whirl sometime.
I have been using Askimet since I started my WordPress blog, and it has worked pretty darn well. However, enough obvious spams were slipping through the net that I decided to get more aggressive and try a double whammy of Askimet and Bad Behavior. The combination has worked great! Since employing that a month ago, I have been bothered by zero spam! I highly recommend both.
Hey!
Thanks for the plug. I noticed quite a few hits on my site stemming from yours and checked it out.
How’s things back in Cville?
Happy New Year!