How to clean up WordPress spam comments and meta data with phpMyAdmin. A lot of WordPress spam comments and meta data will keep your WordPress database huge, and slows down your site. It’s best to delete spam comments regularly, but if you’re facing hundreds of thousands spam comments, here is how to delete them all in bulk
Sysadmins of the North
Technical blog, where topics include: computer, server, web, sysadmin, MySQL, database, virtualization, optimization and security
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The less spammers hit your WordPress blog, the better your blog performs, is one of my opinions. A second is, the less unnecessary plugins you use on your WordPress blog, the better. So, a little while ago I decided to remove plugins like Stop Spammer Registration Plugin and do its work myself. Here is why & how:
Continue readingRemove WordPress Social Media Widget Plugin; the plugin injects spam into your website
Who we are
Our website address is: https://www.saotn.org.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
Who we share your data with
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Your contact information
Additional information
How we protect your data
What data breach procedures we have in place
What third parties we receive data from
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
Industry regulatory disclosure requirements
Recently the WordPress Jetpack email sharing service is often abused by spammers. They use the Send to Email Address for sending spam. All these kind of “Tell a Friend” scripts are abused a lot. Here is how to disable email share service in WordPress Jetpack.
Continue readingIsn’t it true that, when you (start to) develop WordPress websites for clients, and you host them yourself, you find yourself in a situation where you need to know a lot about “stuff” other than WordPress development? In this optimizing WordPress hosting post, I provide 9+ practical tips for you, to improve WordPress hosting performance. Especially useful if you plan to develop and host WordPress websites yourself.
Continue readingHere are 17+ valuable WordPress snippets for a site-specific plugin and functions.php file that provides you a better WordPress experience. Enhance your WordPress site with these small PHP snippets: WordPress filters, actions and functions. Quickly add or extend the functionality you need for your WordPress website! Read on…
Here’s a blacklist check script written in PowerShell. You can use this to lookup an IP address in various blacklists (DNSBL, RBL). Such a check is a great indicator for an IP address’ reputation. Basically this PowerShell blacklist checker is a port of my Bash script to check an IP address blacklist status in Linux.
Continue readingImperva’s Web Application Attack Report shows spam is WordPress’ largest security threat. Imperva, an international cyber security company founded in 2002, published its 2015 web application attack report. The report includes a thorough analysis of attack data obtained through its Web Application Firewall (or WAF).
Do you host your WordPress website on Windows Server IIS? And are you having trouble with your web.config? I often receive questions about how to use a web.config file in WordPress on Windows Server, and which settings are important for a WordPress site. Maybe it’s because I’m a WordPress on IIS enthusiast, so here is my web.config for your convenience (really, it’s not that special).
Continue readingThe WordPress comment system can be a bless for your blog, because of the user interaction. However, when the WordPress comment option is abused by spammers, it becomes a real pain in the “@ss”. With tens- or hundreds of thousands spam reactions, disabling WordPress comments – and removing – is the only way to go. Here is how to disable WordPress comments in both the WordPress Dashboard interface and in your MySQL database.
WordPress xmlprc.php DDoS and brute-force attacks. How to identify, block, mitigate and leverage these xmlrpc.php scans, brute-force, and user enumeration attacks on WordPress sites… Secure WordPress xmlprc.php interface and reduce service disruption.
How to delete all MAILER-DAEMON emails from your Postfix queue, when it matches a sender or recipient email address condition. When a large scale spam run was sent through your mail servers, you need to clean up and remove those spam messages. Doing so guarantees normal, valid email messages being sent quickly, and the spam messages never leave your queue. In Postfix, there are various similar commands to delete messages from the Postfix mail queue. Based on the Message-ID and/or email address…
Malware Must Die! has done a great, and extensive write-up on the subject of hacked and abused FTP sites (accounts). This topic fits well within my daily routine investigating and closing down hacked websites, for which I have to use various techniques for finding those hacked sites. As you might know, website security is one of the major themes of this site.
Contact Form 7 is a WordPress plugin that provides a simple but flexible contact form. On IIS, Contact Form 7 captcha has one HUGE disadvantage: temporary captcha files placed in wp-content/uploads/wpcf7_captcha, are not automatically removed. The files are made read only. Here is how to remove Contact Form 7 temporary captcha files on IIS…
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