spam Archives

Disable Joomla Contacts component (com_contact) in MySQL / phpMyAdmin

Web applications / By Jan Reilink / 05/01/2021

Often the built-in Joomla contact forms component (com_contact) is abused by spammers. These contact forms allow the sender to receive a copy of the form contents. All spammers need to do is enter the email address of the target as sender/from. This way, anyone can use the Joomla contact form for spamming anyone. This short article explains how to disable and combat this.

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Delete spam comments after three (3) days

WordPress / By Jan Reilink / 09/12/2019

Here is how to change Akismet interval to three days instead of 15 days for deleting spam comments using the akismet_delete_comment_interval filter.

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Remove Jetpack email sharing service

WordPress / By Jan Reilink / 19/05/2017

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 Jetpack.

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PowerShell blacklist check script: find an IP address’ blacklist status & reputation

PowerShell / By Jan Reilink / 19/05/2016

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.

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Clean-up WordPress spam comments and meta data

WordPress / By Jan Reilink / 23/04/2014

How to delete 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.

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Check IP address blacklist status in Bash

GNU Linux / By Jan Reilink / 14/10/2011

Here is a Linux Bash shell script to check whether an IP address is listed in a DNSBL blacklist, or RBL. This is a modified version of a by J65nko posted Bash script to check an IP address reputation status in several blacklists. I’ve added HttpBl as backlist and an API key is required for this list. Using this script in Bash you can quickly test if an IP address is blacklisted.

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