Another Wordpress Blog

Spammers ruin everything!

On Sunday, I was taken aback when Bad Behavior blocked me from administering my own blog. This happened because a spammer dude took out an account with Comcast, my ISP. So, now I share IP’s with a spammer! (I’m also having trouble posting comments on blogs that use Bad Behavior to filter spam. )

Too bad Bad Behavior doesn’t include a Captcha so I can show I’m a human! Oh well…

Anyway, I as you can see, I can post now! I was able to whitelist myself for my own blog. (But, if you are using BadBehavior, I can’t comment at your blogs right now. Sorry!)

Now, I know a few of you use Bad Behavior. I bet you are now worried you might ban yourself from administering your own blog? Or at least you’d like to know how to fix it if it happens?

This post will tell you: a) how to tell you have been banned by Bad Behavior and b) what to do to fix the problem.

First: How can you tell that Bad Behavior banned you? When you try to access a protected part of a blog, you’ll get this cryptic message very similar to this one:

“Error 403

We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /wp-comments-post.php on this server.

Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.

Your technical support key is: 43b8-03e4-1366-73cd

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact ‘yourself at email.com’ and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.”

Now, what you should you do? The words “fix this problem yourself” will be hyperlinked. Click them.

You’ll now read a mysterious message that says this:

Technical Support

Your request was intercepted by security software which protects the Web site you visited from malicious activity, such as hackers, spam and viruses. We apologize for the inconvenience, but your request matched a profile of suspicious activity. This problem is usually quite easy to fix.
[...]

Blacklist Reason(s):
http://www.spamhaus.org/SBL/sbl.lasso?query=SBL54691
…

Click the link to spamhouse.org. You’ll find an explanation. In my case, I got a message that began like this:

“67.184.3.0/24 is listed on the Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database as being assigned to, under the control of, or providing service to a known professional spam operation run by Brian Kramer / Expedite Media Group.”

I was able to confirm that my IP address is in that range and that the spamming has nothing to do with any virus on my machine.

I would have preferred learning I had a virus!

Sharing an IP with a spammer is a big pain; I’ll be blocked by BadBehavior until Comcast bans that guy! I wrote Comcast, but I know it’s going to take a while before they cancel this guy’s account.

In the meantime, I needed a workaround for my own blog so I can write posts: I needed to whitelist my IP. If this happens to you, you’ll need to whitelist your IP.

Here’s how: Access your ../blog/wp-content/plugins directory. Find the “Bad-Behavior” folder; (note the capital letters.) Open that, then find the “bad-behavior” folder inside. Open that; find “whitelist.inc.php”.

Find the bit of code that looks like this:

// Includes four examples of whitelisting by IP address and netblock.
$bb2_whitelist_ip_ranges = array(
"10.0.0.0/8",
"172.16.0.0/12",
"192.168.0.0/16",
// "127.0.0.1",
);

Add your IP address (or IP range) after the //127.0.0.1.

You’ll now be able to access your own blog admin area and comment on your own blog.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to comment at other blogs protected by BadBehavior- unless you email them and get them to add your IP to their whitelist. If you are a regular commenter at their blog, they may add your IP to their white list. BadBehavior will still protect them from most spammers - but it will let the ones on that particular IP through. (At which point, SpamKarma and/or Akismet, will likely catch their spam! See why triple protection is good? )

Anyway, if I hope that helps those of you who share an IP with a spammer.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 7:07 am and is filed under Plugins, Spam, WordPress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.