TypePad- I'm getting killed by spam here!
Months ago we turned on the TypePad CAPTCHA because of the massive amounts of spam comments that jerks were posting. People have complained about that but we don't have hours a day to spend dealing with the crap that gets posted without it. Yesterday it came to my attention that the CAPTCHA wasn't working and I turned in a help ticket to TypePad reporting that fact. I was informed late yesterday that there was a problem with CAPTCHA that had been fixed and they tested a comment on jkOnTheRun and said it worked fine. My own tests showed otherwise and I've reported again that it is still not working. The proof is how I have spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with spam comments that have been appearing continually since yesterday. I have deleted in excess of 100 spam comments and this is just from a couple of sources. Come on, TypePad! Get this resolved, you're killing me. Time I could be spending blogging is spent dealing with this mess.
You're not the only one seeing this.
Posted by: Warner Crocker | June 02, 2007 at 12:03 PM
Is it working now?
Posted by: Chrisboff | June 02, 2007 at 12:48 PM
I don't think so.
Posted by: James Kendrick | June 02, 2007 at 12:56 PM
best solution is to choose one pretty girl from nine girls, when the others are ugly...
Posted by: Spage | June 02, 2007 at 02:09 PM
Good grief!
We WordPress users have spam problems, too, but it is generally the reverse problem ... i.e., the Akismet filer sometimes swallows legitimate comments. There were a few instances last week where some spam leaked through, but I think those occurred during a time when I was doing a system upgrade.
Long time since I've used TypePad ... are there no other spam filter options for it? WordPress offers tons of plugins but I do not recall any plugin capability for typepad, but it has been a long time.
Good luck. Blog admin is hard enough without that crap.
Posted by: Bruce | June 02, 2007 at 02:51 PM
Is that the only spam filter you can choose from? I believe Akismet works on other platforms than WordPress - but not sure how a hosted TypePad solution differs...
Posted by: Dave Zatz | June 02, 2007 at 03:09 PM
Hi, James -- we are definitely working on some new methods for battling spam, and one of them involves how we display the CAPTCHA; our engineers are working on getting that fixed. We don't do a great job shouting about the progress we are making, but in the past few months our filtering has dramatically improved, based on the stats that we see, and the anectdotal information we're hearing from our customers. In the meantime, make sure that anytime a spam comment gets through you delete it using the "Report Spam" button in the comment listing screen, because that will help make our filters more effective over time.
Posted by: Michael Sippey | June 02, 2007 at 03:12 PM
Michael, thanks for jumping in on this thread. The TypePad spam filtering has been very effective with the CAPTCHA as it has been working. We don't need another solution because it has been working well. The problem is it stopped working entirely. Thanks for looking into the problem, I look forward to a solution soon.
Posted by: James Kendrick | June 02, 2007 at 08:42 PM
Time to move to wordpress :D
Posted by: Arpit Jacob | June 03, 2007 at 01:44 AM
If it helps I just posted a comment on another post and the captcha was working.
Posted by: Jason | June 03, 2007 at 03:10 AM
I'm in the same boat, although it's not filling with spam as fast as yours.
I have several TypePad weblogs and in the past couple of days I, too, have been getting spam that should have been caught. A few dozen.
And, yes, CAPTCHA is on. I still got a fair number of spam comments today (June 3).
I'm considering using TypePad's moderator feature to approve every comment before it's published but I hate to do that because I want people to be be able to post immediately.
Let's hope this situation is cleared up quickly.
Posted by: Alan A. Reiter | June 03, 2007 at 03:22 PM
Same thing here! If typepad does not correct the problem extremely fast, in a couple of days, every spammer in the world will rush to typepad blogs to spam more than ever...
Posted by: Stephane | June 03, 2007 at 06:37 PM
Same thing happening with me, too. CAPTCHA is enabled in my settings but definitely not working . . . unless all those XXX URLS that are being left in my comments involve UMPCs and other gadgets, of course (and if that's the case, I definitely don't want to know about it!).
Posted by: Jenn | June 03, 2007 at 07:46 PM
My blog has also been getting hammered with comment spam all weekend. I couldn't figure out what was wrong till I looked around a bit and found your post.
I truly wish I could change the decision I made over two years ago to use TypePad. What a huge mistake that was! Now don't want to lose the traffic momentum I've been able to build up so I'm stuck.
If you're thinking about starting a blog, do not, I repeat, do not use TypePad!
Posted by: Joe Wikert | June 03, 2007 at 07:55 PM
An Irishman was once serving in a regiment in India. He did not like the climate there and decided to think out a trick by which he could get home. He went to the doctor and said to him, “My eyesight is very bad. Can you help me?”
The doctor looked at him for a while and then asked, “Well, but bow can you prove to me that your eyesight is bad?”
The Irishman looked about the room and at last said, “Well, doctor, can you see that nail on the wall?”
“Yes.” Replied the doctor.
“Well then,” said the Irishman, “and I can't.”
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Posted by: Pippolink Pippo | July 17, 2008 at 09:38 PM