Is zen.spamhaus.org really working for blog spam?

Last month I found a post advising to setup Zen from spamhaus on Movable Type to filter spam. Since then, I've had an alarming number of false positives, i.e. legitimate comments that are junked on the basis that the commenter's IP is listed in one of the Zen databases. By alarming, I mean that when more than half the junked comments are in fact legitimate, it's time to junk the spam filter instead. Looks like it's not that smart anyway.

Has someone else seen the same problem?

1 TrackBack

The trackback spammers here have been been getting more persistent, and, of course, sneakier.  I still get all the typical pharmaceutical ones (though even those are getting more varied),... Read More

3 Comments

Please read the FAQ bloggers. Zen includes the PBL, a list of IP addresses that sould not be sending direct email. But these are the IP addresses everyone using broadband, dialup, etc. are on. Meaning: the IPs that post to blogs! Most legitimate posts will be blocked if one uses this.

http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/answers.lasso?section=Spamhaus%20PBL#190

sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org could be used, but again, read the FAQ

http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/answers.lasso?section=Spamhaus%20XBL#155

Thanks for the FAQ, I suspected something like that. Six Apart should not advise bloggers to use this filter since it's not intended for the same use.

thanks for the info, François. it was killing our blog community too and we couldn't find out the problem.

Leave a comment

Recent Entries

  • Moving on

    If everything goes well, next week I shall be the happy founder and owner of a shiny brand new company, under which I'll incorporate my...

  • Movable Type 4.2 is out

    Movable Type 4.2 is here with a lot of good news and new features. The new set of licences, if I get things correctly, is...

  • Using Movable Type as a CMS and NewsML feeds generator

    I'm putting the last touches on a CMS to generate custom NewsML feeds for internet portals. It's based on Movable Type 4.2 and allows for...

  • Google lets GMail certificate expire

    This expired certificate alert just showed up for my GMail account. Apparently Google let the SSL certificate expire for the smtp.gmail.com domain. In the...

  • Bon appétit

    We wanted to strip away all the nonsense. Do we really need a sommelier? Do we really need all the other accoutrements that you see...

Close