Adobe Community: Message List - Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 08:48:27 GMT

Hi scratchmybrain,

you don't need to change sections. When you change the status in the dropdown box, you will see a confirmation in the right corner of the screen. The change is applied instantly.

Thanks,

Dragos M.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:49:09 GMT

If I mark something as spam, but then want to delete it, do I need to log out of the comments area before I go back in and delete? Or does it register the comment as spam in that instant of changing the dropdown box?

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 07:27:52 GMT

Hi Peter,

I'm glad to hear this. However, as I mentioned in the document, If you are using Akismet, make sure that you continue to manage comments once in a while so that you are sure that it stays properly trained.

Thanks,

Dragos M.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:04:44 GMT

Hooray...this finally seems to have done the trick. Spam comments have dropped from 20 or 30 a day to zero since this update.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:59:48 GMT

Hi all,

we've released the new spam protection features.

Here's a document on this forum about this issue :http://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-2882

All feedback is welcome.

Dragos M.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:28:45 GMT

Yes, my own website has been targetted very heavily the last week. Every few minutes I get another. I haven't had complaints from clients, but if they're hitting me I'm sure their hitting some of my clients as well. Bulk delete would be great. It's all very nice having akismet mark them as spam, but I still need to delete them all including the CRM entry they create as well. Then I have the annoying workflows coming into my inbox every few minutes. I'm going to turn it off and hope there isn't a legitimate comment there that I need to respond to. We really need a solution to this.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 21:48:29 GMT

Another week on and the spam just keeps on getting worse! Other than the ability to bulk delete it would now appear that the long awaited Akismet roll out has had absolutely no effect whatsoever.

Not a happy camper!

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:48:06 GMT

If they have a cached blog page it doesn't matter if you've removed the comment form from it, they can still submit the comments.

-m

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:13:30 GMT

Just to add salt to the festering wound one of my clients in particular that has had the entire ability to make comments removed still gets spam through the blog. That is correct, even without any physical code available the spammers still get through and get through hard.

Yes I have submitted yet another case to the pile to have looked by Support. To get to the point, it would seem the only thing I can see that could allow this backdoor is the fact many of the older blogs still have the check box 'allow comments' ticked. Potentially that means going back through a few years worth of posts to uncheck all these boxes. Not cool. But we shall see what support has to say first.

No code but they can still get in makes for a pretty scary situation.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:29:16 GMT

Hi Pete,

could you share (via PM) the website that receives spam?

Also, as mentioned above, we're reimplementing the Captcha engine. Spamers usually succeede in finding new ways of breaking through the walls that we put between you and them (Akismet, Captcha) and we have to keep up to this. I'll contact the Akismet team to check out the status (if there are currently issues with the engine).

Thanks,

Dragos M.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 01:58:27 GMT

Same here. When this latest release first appeared the level of spam fell for a week, then it's been gradually building again and is now back to unacceptable levels. I mark and delete spam every day but Akismet is still not recognising 95% of spam as spam.

I don't know long your "eventually" is Dragos but it better start to happen soon!

Really disappointed that having waited so long for this latest release it appears to be having virtually NO effect whatsoever.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:27:00 GMT

Hi all,

we are working on improving Captcha as well and we'll let you know shortly when we can release a new version of the CAPTCHA engine.

Regarding Akismet, it has to be trained to start managing better SPAM. You do need to go through the comments and mark them as SPAM in the beginning. For some users, this took far less than expected, but for others it took more than expected. Eventually it becomes a very strong SPAM filter and you won't have to ask the visitors of your site to type in the CAPTCHA characters after every comment.

Thanks,

Dragos M.

Product Manager

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:17:07 GMT

Amen! We've had to disable comments on most of our client sites.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:11:26 GMT

Well the day has come when the first of my clients has started to respond to the use of the new spam protection. The response was "Remove the ability to post to the blog because the spam just keeps on coming". Because Captcha was not updated it has not stopped a torrent of spam still coming through and even though this so called learning system is being trained the spammers just keep changing email addresses and content to adapt.

Even though this system allows for management of the spam once it arrives the unfortunate thing is the client still has to login every day and sift through the crap which is virtually no different to haw it was before.

With Captcha not being updated as well unfortunately I can only see more disgruntled long term clients I have put into BC disappointed with the results. I personally have seen very few improvements in the level of spam but simply a change in the spam content itself.

Is there going to be an improvement in Captcha? I would have expected this to go hand in hand with the new filters. It would be good if we did not need this wall but I have not seen a better system yet to stem the malicious flow of spam.

This is my feedback response so far.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:13:44 GMT

Hey Peter,

Have a look at this FAQ for more details on how to enable it: http://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-2508

As for the comments that are identified as spam by the detection engine, it will mark them as Spam. You can go into Modules -> Comments and bulk delete them. In the next release we'll introduce a way to automatically delete spam comments.

Florin

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:39:35 GMT

Read the blog and the info about it to see the interface in the admin and then go to it :)

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:59:29 GMT

Hi Dragos,

Great update. A vast improvement. Where can we find out exactly how it works, for instance, what happens to the posts once they are marked as spam? So far they just seem to stay there?

Peter

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:40:22 GMT

Hi Dragos,

Very happy to have this update happen... In order to implement does this mean that any existing forms need to be replaced for them to have Askimet? I created a test form and the Askimet was not part of the submit validation - it is still the captcha verification field.

Is there a KB piece or other documentation for implementing best practices?

Regards,

Art Stiefel

Smarter By Design, Inc.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:39:51 GMT

Hi all,

today we had our latest release. As promissed, we released the integration with Akismet. In the following 2 releases we will improve this integration, as mentioned in this thread. Please start using it and give us feedback and improvement suggestions.

Kind Regards,

Dragos Manescu

Product Manager

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 02:16:04 GMT

Well they have to, as long as you have advised them and offered to then thats all you can do Matt. When new features come out, things do not work and it is then turned offf you have told them. IT is legacy now, so not updated, only as a result of the new UI changes. But as long as you have it in writing these things to them about it in good time and things do go wrong in regard to them having issues or not knowing how to use the new UI when it is the only one they can not do anything negtive because you have advised them before hand.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:45:01 GMT

Haaaaa. Ever tried training a old dog new tricks. Some clients just won't budge. Depreciation will happen of course and for them a year or two of V3 should be enough to move over permenantly.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:40:52 GMT

Matt, you probably missed all the anouncmenets and process for V2 etc.

By default new sites and users see V3, BC have stated about what works and does not ork in V2 and when issues and bugs etc are addressed in the V2.5 (because it is not v3, does not have half of the original v3 concepts) interface then the other will be turned off.
Currently older users and users who choose to use V2 are the ones using V2. We have pretty much got most clients trainied and on the new UI already.
Discussions by people on how to do this and BC advise about this change over have been going on for months, since after xmas

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:21:00 GMT

My opinion is that V2 needs to become redundant at some stage and I am sure BC is of the same view. As to how this is done I canot say. There are already several things that no longer work corrcetly in V2 but switch to V3 and all is good. Really though if it is no extra work to implement into V2 then it should be there. I will be working towards my clients that have made the spam complaints go to V3 as a process to take advantage of the new system enhancements as part of the training.

Thanks again and keep us in the loop.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 23:11:04 GMT

Totally agree Matt, I often feel to be the mad Hermit in the cave shouting and screaming crazy talk about issues when others stay tight lipped.

I hate the "ITS BROKE FIX IT" moaning and winning method, that is pointless, but being open about issues, voicing these conerns clearly and vocally is important.

BC has been slack on actually taking it on board, they listen but often things are not dealt with but I am hoping changes are happening so things are addressed.

If I had one of my issues aired here right now would be that the engineers are not getting back to support and the people with reported bugs and issues effecting operations of their sites and addressing them. There is a huge backlog in this regard and I have several open tickets, some dating in the months which are confirmed bugs effecting our clients that are not fixed.

Not being able to use shipping calculations based on dimensions because the math is just wrong rendering that feature uselss for example and not being addressed.

One example of many that concerns me.

@Dragos

Great work so far, looks good stuff! Hope it works to deal with this issue.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 22:34:20 GMT

Hi Mat_Wooler,

You're right: complaints should come more often, especially for features that vital for your customers - like this one. I really hope that this thread showed full transparency in our process and understanding in the painpoints that you and your customers feel.

Now, regarding V2 - it should work similarly. An other question arises, do you think that these new features should be only for V3 so that we help your customers move on to V3?

Thanks,

Dragos Manescu

Product Manager

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 22:03:35 GMT

It is great there is progress shown here but people should not be put off posting complaints about what is happening. My exprience with BC is if things are not complained about openly and somewhat agressively the fixes are always pushed back or not taken seriously. Name and shame is a tried and true method and one of the main reasons I made sure never to white lable BC because reliability of repair has always been dismal. Beter the client know who is directly responsible.

It is going to be great to see this fixed. Will this be just a V3 release or will clients see it in V2? I have some cleints stuck in thier ways and like to use V2. Bit of a pain but maybe this will help move them over.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:58:11 GMT

This looks good Dragos. Can't wait!

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:48:25 GMT

Hi all,

I wanted to reassure you that we are working at the integration as we speak. Please view these mocks to understand how this will work in the back-end of the website: http://www.businesscatalyst.com/mocks/001%20-%20Akismet.pdf

For Admin V2 this is quite similar.

Also I want to make it clear that you will not have to delete comments one by one (hence spending a couple of hours everyday - as rayasnford and Mad Mochi were suggesting earlier in this thread) due to the bulk actions feature that we are introducing to comments (please check screens 1,2 and 3 from the mocks). This may happen if spam comments pass through the Akismet filter, or if you just want to mark as SPAM manually some comments.

We still need to run some more feasibility and reliability tests on the integration itself (as we are talking about a sensible integration with a 3rd party provider here),hence we are pushing the entire release (not only for Akismet) for the Monday, the 27th of August.

We definitely understand your pain and your customers' and we are inspired by it to have this integration as reliable as possible.

Next, in September we will be building a few enhancements as mentioned earlier ( the most important being related to CRM fields deletion).

Thanks for your patience,

Dragos M.

Product Manager

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 03:08:31 GMT

We have had to disable comments on several client blogs and both they and us are feeling extremely frustrated by this issue. 21st August can't come soon enough for the new release as the whole thing is costing us time, money and goodwill. As designers and marketers rather than programmers we rely on BC to keep things running smoothly hence our investment in the system. Being made to look like complete 'wallies' in the eyes of our clients is not helpful. Your efforts to resolve this asap are most welcome....

This morning's email from a client

How are you progressing on spam. It is appalling today.

Deirdre

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 21:57:17 GMT

This can't come soon enough. My clients are freaking out more and more every day... Unfortunately, they end up taking out their frustrations on us. Very much looking forward to the update!

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:48:44 GMT

Hi all,

bulk actions will also be included in this release (e.g. - mark as spam, move in pending, delete). We realized that it is an important feature for sites who receive lots of spammy comments.

CRM fields related to comments will be managed in the following release.

Thank you for your patience and we're looking forward to releasing this feature at the end of this month.

Dragos Manescu

Product Manager

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 09:05:02 GMT

Not until they update things Mad

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 08:14:07 GMT

We're having the same issues as well with tons of spam comments each day. Is there any way to delete them all at once, without having to click on "Delete" one by one?

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:59:57 GMT

Good news! Thanks.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:48:14 GMT

Hi all,

we are having this feature for the August release (as announced earlier).

The Akismet integration will be applied to

Blogs
News
Catalogs
FAQ
Products
WebApps
WebPages
For forums there will be a different integration

Later on (next release), we are planning some improvements that will make the integration complete.

Thanks a lot for your patience guys.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 03:36:01 GMT

In the comment form itself, remove the field asking for website and its label. Seems to have reduced spam on some sites because the temptation of the ability to have a link posted is removed.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 01:55:28 GMT

Hi Liam,

I can't see how I am able to edit the Blog Comment form to remove the URL field. I have inserted the tag {tag_fullname_nolink} in place of {tag_fullname} within the Comments Layout Template in the hope this will help.

Any help gratefully accepted.

Cheers

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 01:19:33 GMT

I agree. I'm having to spend several hours a day just helping my clients delete spam comments.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 01:10:13 GMT

It has come to a point where I feel this blog spam issue is at an intolerable state. Yet again for the 4th time in as many weeks I have had a request by yet another a client to remove all ability for the blog to allow comments in order to simply stop the rate of spam comments coming through. Even though the comments were initially moderated in this case to try and stem it, it still meant every day trawling through the comments and deleting all the spam by Payday Loans.

Not only has it totally removed the ability for my clients to even work on a social media level anymore but it makes myself (and I am sure any other partner with the issue) look like idiots for ever recommending this system.

This issue has to be addressed NOW. BC may not care as there is plenty more fish in the sea but for our business a few clients are now speaking about seriously moving and that means we are also looking at other CMS's.

If BC needs volunteer sites to test Akismet I am more than willing to volunteer a few blogs right now.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 04:21:30 GMT

Another one here who has seen a sudden spike in spam comments on a blog; currently getting a few dozen a day! Will be very glad to see this improvement made asap.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 03:19:20 GMT

Tip for people with the issue at the moment:

IF you have the website URL field - remove it from the form. You should see your spam either stop or vastly reduce. They think they can get their link appear through that so without it, it should reduce the spam.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 21:09:51 GMT

Thanks for the update Dragosman, that sounds very reassurring. This is something I can explain to my clients and gain their confidence again.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 19:49:23 GMT

That's good to hear.

@Lynda they do make a recaptcha api for active server, of course. Almost anything would be better than they one they have.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:19:34 GMT

Glad to hear that Dragos.

From my understanding this will cover blog comments which seem to be the majority of spam. But what about the CPATCHA with other areas like web forms? While I have not seen spam there if they are bypassing comment CAPTCHA they could bypass the other. (Correct me if I am wrong.) One thought I have had is allowing the use of third party CAPTCHA systems (with an option to use BC's built in CAPTCHA if wanted). I know services like reCAPTCHA are available if you have server side access. I do not know the technical requirements to implement 3rd party CAPTCHA but I would love to see this feature.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:13:14 GMT

Hi all,

we are integrating Akismet in BC. It seems to be the de facto anti-SPAM solution for blogs and forums worldwide

The current CAPTCHA feature will still be present but we believe that the Akismet integration will make the need for CAPTCHA tools obsolete.

Also, for any comment that is detected or marked as SPAM (by Akismet or manually by the site owner), the related CRM entry will be automatically deleted so there shouldn't be any effort on your side to manually delete CRM contacts related to spam.

From the time frame perspective, we are considering the release for this feature (as stated above) for late August. Should any change in the release date occur (earlier release), we'll let you know on this thread.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 00:25:48 GMT

Just to add my name to the list I have had this happen a few times. Glad to see the update coming. =>

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 00:17:29 GMT

Ditto I have had to rip comments out of every website and replace with facebook comments because the lack of action is terrible. Still getting heaps through contact us forms and that has to be fixed because I can't rip those out ... sadly you have wasted so much of my time having to maintain sites when I shouldn't have to.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 00:09:09 GMT

Just how long should it take to replace the Captcha module with one that is harder to crack? This has been going on for SIX WEEKS.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 00:06:43 GMT

My clients are getting dozens of these a day. Needless to say they are PISSED OFF. Just remember, **** flows downhill.

Re: Captcha is not preventing spam comments from being submitted

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:00:09 GMT

Late August? We are getting up to a dozen of these payday spam commments per day! Any way to accelerate a solution? Has anyone else figured out a way to beat this thing?