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Local Comcast Users Listed As Spammers
By Greg L | 5 December 2007 | Blogs | 16 Comments
Having trouble getting comments posted on BVBL lately? You can thank Comcast for that.
I regularly get a lot of trackback spam coming from Comcast network space, and it’s somewhat of a pain. Almost all of this gets caught by my spam filters, but the only way to discourage these spambots from continuing their attacks is to block their IP address at the server. Since about 60% of requests for pages at BVBL come from Comcast accounts, and these shift from user to user fairly frequently, blocking these risks having legitimate users get blocked once the problem child in question moves to a new IP address, and a legitimate user ends up with that IP. So I end up having to throw a lot of network space into the moderation queue, which does occasionally cause folks some delays in getting their comments to show up, and requires a fair amount of my time babysitting the moderation queue.
Comcast, in its continuing quest to deliver shoddy service has managed to get a bunch of their IP addresses in this area identified by spamhaus as spammers by allowing malignant spambots and compromised machines to run amok on their network space. Spamhaus, and a number of other outfits maintain “block lists” of IP addresses that mailservers and webservers use to filter out spam. Spamhaus collects the data that supports this list from a variety of sources, but each listing exists essentially is there because the IP address was the source of spam or some sort of malicious behavior. End up on one of these block lists, and everyone that relies on that block list service immediately cuts off services. I use spamhaus block lists within a Wordpress plugin called “Bad Behavior”, and it reduces the amount of spam I have to deal with tremendously.
Getting off one of these block lists is a real problem. Spamhaus only responds to network administrators — in this case it would be someone from Comcast — who certify they’ve adequately dealt with the problem with that address, and will not respond to requests from mere mortals. I’m certain contacting Comcast with a request like this would be about as productive as trying to get them to tell you why they’re digging up your front yard.
If you try to post a comment and you get a message like this, you’ve been caught in this trap:
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: 62cc-67f1-1366-73cd
You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.
If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact admin at bvbl.net and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.
The part in bold above is the part of the “key” that identifies the error as a block list match.
Here’s what you can do to try to clear this specific problem:
- Reboot your cable modem. Sometimes this will change the IP address you are using, and you may get one that isn’t listed.
- Try registering for an account and posting under that account. The spam check may not be applied to comments coming from registered users, although I haven’t gone through all the Wordpress code that would tell me for sure whether this is the case.
- Switch to Verizon DSL, or some other provider.
If this continues to be a real problem I may go and edit the code for the “Bad Behavior” Wordpress plugin to remove the check against spamhaus, but I am very reluctant to do this since the vast majority of listed addresses there are definitely ones worthy of being blocked. If I have to reduce the effectiveness of this anti-spam solution, putting something like those hated “captchas” in might have to be done.
UPDATE: Rather than have users jump through hoops here, I’ve changed the primary mechanism used to filter out spam to a plugin called “Spam Karma 2″. We’ll see how this goes, and hopefully it will clear up some of the problems some users have been experiencing. I hate having to clean up someone else’s mess, but the comments users have posted here have been invaluable in creating a vibrant community of BVBL readers, and leaving it to the readers — many whom would be rather uncomfortable navigating the rocky shoals of block lists, IP address reassignments, and anti-spam filtering — to address this would probably harm the discourse here.
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
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16 Comments
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Testing, testing…
Of note: Bad Behavior recently went bad. You probably need to upgrade to 2.0.11.
Don’t understand a word of what you’ve said
BTW, I have no interest in that at all, other than my own personal success, but Verizon DSL is both cheaper and it’s reliable. I am told that it is not so fast as Comcast, but I assure you, if that’s true, it’s not noticeable.
what i meant by “…no interest in that at all” is poorly stated….what I meant was that I have no interest or benefit (other than personal satisfaction with Verizon DSL) in offering a good word about their service.
I got it from all 3 networks that I have access to (only one of which is Comcast). The problem is not just with Comcast Greg and none of my machines are zombies or spambots….
Tech issues my friend, tech issues…
I also just ran a spamhaus check on my home ip and there are no incidents reported with it. There are larger issues at play here with your blog Greg and assuming that every problem you have with this site is due to zombified machines and Comcast is probably not going to solve them.
Last night, on my home PC (I have Verizon FIOS), I received the same error message as mentioned in this article while attempting to post to THIS thread - lol. I think it’s a comcastspiracy against you, Greg - lol
Greg, I had my Comcast business IP listed. I contacted spamhaus and they removed it for me. They were blocking whole blocks of IP’s from Comcast business. Once they removed it, I was removed from the others as well.
Spamhaus is notorious for being “lazy” in they way they block addresses. It’s extra work to block single addresses reported, do spamhaus has a tendency to blacklist entire subnets (large blocks of addresses) rather than single offenders. So, if you happen to have an IP address in the same subnet as a spambot or malicious user, you may find your address in the range spamhaus has decided to blacklist for convenience.
That is exactly what happened to me Turn!!
The most effective way I’ve found to get a different IP with Comcast is to change the MAC address of the device plugged into the cablemodem.
You will most likely have to reboot the cablemodem to do this.
I don’t think blocking dynamic IP address space from Comcast or any other ISP is very effective because of the ease at which someone can change their IP address.
John Light said…”Last night, on my home PC (I have Verizon FIOS), I received the same error message as mentioned in this article while attempting to post to THIS thread.”
Oh come on, John, you just haven’t yet mastered how to turn your ‘puter on yet….:)
Ooooops, was just gonna give John Liight a ration, claiming that his problem was that he hadn’t yet learned how to turn his computer “on”…:) Then, guess what, “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!” …but it is true; I clicked “submit” and when nothing happened quickly, clicked “submit” again. So, in my case, guess I was the actual culprit by not waiting sufficient time.
Well, the above post “took” but it took a long time after clicking “submit”…only trying to help.