Hi, I've had some amount of spamming in my guest book for quite some time. This is very annoying!
I wonder if i can do anything to stop it? I have now disabled HTML code in my guestbook so that they can't put a link in directly, but those people haven't stop. It there a way to block spam?

Thanks a lot.

Is it the same person over and over again? Use an IP trace like sitemeter.com to find the IPs, then use something like messagespy.com to ban them. That may work. You have a complicated issue there. You may just have to keep working through it. You could also start requiring an email to be posted. Or email confirmation if you could find that kind of guest book.

Thanks very much for your advice. I've looked at it. However, it appears to come from different persons :-(, so i managed to block some. I also noticed that spam are reduced after i disabled HTML, from about 10 a day down to a few a day, but it looks a lot messier, oh well.

Guestbook spam has become more and more evident in this times. Looks like some others want ot have free advertisment at your page. It is always about viagra and some other pharmacy things. Why? I don't have a clue. But I have a solution for this problem. It is called CAPTCHA. It is system that proviedes protection against spam, some pattern of numbers and letters must be entered before hitting submit button or else input will not be submitted. Try looking for this at Google, or try this guestbook with captcha system. Guestbook script is here.

Regards, Robert

Apart from what Robert has suggested, I think you can try making your gb moderated, so that you approve of every entry before publishing it. It may not stop the spam, but at least it prevents it from becoming public. The disadvantage is that this may discourage people from posting at your guestbook, and that you need to be online frequently.

You could also use an image to verify that the user is human - just use the sort of authentication that allows the user to type in what he/she sees on a randomly generated image That might help too.

Hope this helps.
Cheers!

I know exactly what you mean! Mine's all different people, too! I keep getting these messages advertising car rentals, hotels (mainly in Hawaii), and other spam links. Anyway, the only thing that I can tell you to do, is go with everyone's suggestions. However, an image verification wouldn't always work, though (especially since some spam bots can read characters in images).

Also, if you decide to do the random image thing (but don't know how to), there is a tutorial for it at: http://www.php-mysql-tutorial.com/user-aut...erification.php
Although, that uses a login form validation, but it should be easy to follow and refine to the way you want it.

If you know how to do it (and I'm not so sure that I do), you could prevent the message from being sent at all if it contains things like links or whatever kind of HTML you want to prevent.

Ugh. I'm getting similar problems with my forums. First I tried to ban them, but they came back. Then I had most forums accesible to members only. They registered. Finally I had them face the Email verification and the random code. They stopped, thankfully. However I have a forum for guests (updates forum) and they spammed that. That pissed me off and led me to turn the whole forum Member Exclusive.

This post has been edited by icemarle: Feb 28 2006, 10:32 AM

Yes, I would say welcome to the jungle. My guestbook hasn't been spammed since I installed image verfication system. (it has to be random). Forum spam can be stopped by mail verfication and image verification combination.

Btw, Mama Soap, how is your new guestbook coming? Any success?

argh arghhhhh ARGHH I have that... not only in my guestbook... but in the comments system on my wp blog as well. It's soo bloody annoying. and takes up all my space i have .