JaypeeOnline // Blogging News & Reviews

Akismet 2.2.1 - Now With Stats

Spam comments graph Was checking my WordPress dashboard earlier today when I saw a notification for a plugin update. When I checked on the Plugins page, I saw that it was an update for a newer version of Akismet, version 2.2.1. I did the upgrade via the automatic (one-click) upgrade feature of WordPress. After the upgrade process [...]

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Update to Akismet 2.1.8

The first thing I did when I went back to blogging was to make sure my WordPress installation was up-to-date so I upgraded it to the latest version which was WordPress 2.6.1. I also updated all the plugins that I have via the Plugins section of the dashboard. One of the plugins I updated was Akismet and at that time, the version available was 2.1.7. All upgrades went smoothly and I was able to post my last entry, reply to some comments, check blog stats and other stuff. Because of the 3 month long hiatus, I wasn't able to do much with my blog except for approving comments. Spam comments have piled up and numbered at the thousands. No matter how much spam comments I have, I always make it a habit/practice to check the spam queue for valid comments. When I was done going through the list, I clicked on the Delete All button and waited for the spam comments to disappear. It was taking quite a while to finish and at first I thought it was taking long because of the large amount of spam comments I had but when I saw that the browser stopped loading and the spam comments were still there I knew something was wrong. Anyways, I tried doing it again and ended up repeating the process like three times to no avail.

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Another Warning To WordPress Users

Around three months ago, I posted a warning to WordPress and Joomla users about downloading themes from TemplateBrowser.com which contained hidden spam and malware links. What they did was collect public themes for WordPress and Joomla, modify it and redistribute it on their site. Well it seems that they’re not the only ones doing it [...]

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Weekend Roundup #7

NOTE: This post was supposed to be auto-published last Friday afternoon but something went wrong and it didn’t get published. My apologies for the delay and for any confusion it may create. Thank God It’s Friday! Aren’t you guys glad it’s another weekend? Time to relax and take a break from work and other activities. It’s [...]

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PayPal Phishing Email

Yesterday, while I was checking my Gmail spam folder I came across an email that’s supposedly from PayPal. It says in the email that my PayPal account has been temporarily blocked because of several login attempts from different global locations. This is the second time I received a phishing email that’s pretending to be from [...]

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A New Breed of Comment Spam

Commenting or comments is one of the essential parts of a blog. Weblog owners provide and allow users and visitors to leave comments so they can easily share their thoughts and opinions which encourages participation and gives the readers a sense of belongingness. However, spammers are abusing the system and are flooding blogs daily [...]

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Warning to Wordpress & Joomla Theme Users

Found this article from Derek Punsalan’s blog 5ThirtyOne. Templates Browser dot com is collecting Wordpress & Joomla public themes and modifying them by inserting hidden spam or malware links that can compromise the end user then re-distributing it in their site. These spam and malware links are inserted in a functions.php file that comes with each [...]

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PDF Spam

Previously, when you refer to electronic spam it would mean unsolicited emails from advertisers trying to promote and sell all types of products. However, as security companies and anti-spam programs become better in fighting this type of spam, spammers also became smarter and found new ways of spreading spam. One of the recent tools that spammers are utilizing is image spam. Image-based spam is more difficult to detect than text-based spam so it bypasses most email filters and is spread by millions of compromised computers. Spammers have found a new way of spreading image spam and that is through PDF files. BorderWare Technologies' multi-application reputation service called BorderWare Security Network reports of a new trend in PDF spam which are created to bypass current security solutions. Fortunately, there are tools available like BorderWare's Intercept Engine which is a blend of anti-spam and anti-phishing tools that provide anti-spam filters, spam-scanning capabilities and other solutions to prevent and fight spam. Intercept Engine is used by more than 2000 companies and protects more than 30 million security systems worldwide. Learn more about Intercept Engine and other BorderWare products by visiting their website now! Disclosure: This is a sponsored post.

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Spread Love not Viruses

The title may be misleading. This post is about computer viruses. In some parts of the world, people are already celebrating Valentine’s Day. During this special day, married couples and sweethearts are not the only ones who are busy. Spammers and malicious programmers are also busy spreading spam emails, viruses and trojans. Remember the famous “I [...]

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Spam Problems? Challenge ‘em!

I use Akismet to fight blog spam. These past few days I’ve been getting a lot of spam comments. Yesterday morning alone, I found 61 spam comments caught by Akismet overnight. So far, of the 869 spam comments that Akismet has caught, there have been only a few that were able to get through. Even though [...]

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