It appears this blog got hacked, back in 2011. I ran a security scan a little while ago, and it picked up two files that were suspicious, and indeed they were files that weren’t supposed to be there. The file date was from 2011, when this blog was running at another hosting company. I deleted the files, but I doubt they were doing anything still.
A vexing problem for me is spam user registrations. I have no idea why they do it, but there are dozens every day. I installed a plug-in that is supposed to stop this, including all sorts of puzzles and CAPTCHA’s—totally ineffective. Today I put in a new plugin called “STOP SPAM” that is not only supposed to stop spam comments (not much of a problem here) but also spam user registrations. A new version just came out and I’m impressed and so far no spam user registrations. It even has a security scan. 
Read more:
I was wondering what that was. When I was responding to Mark Gillar I got the spam stopper page.
OK, I hope it gave you a CAPTCHA second chance. It should whitelist you from now on,
Yeah I filled out the form and it seemed to have worked.
I will have to admit to a VERY rabid bias against any form of captcha, as most of them quite frankly are unreadable. I have two sites right now I can no longer visit since they require that as part of sing-in, and there is no alternative.
I quite understand about the SPAM blocker software, I’m quite sure I don’t know how you’d get along without it, and I would think, at least from my point of view that if something is going to monitor people signing in, then it should be scanning everything that is going on.
I hope that the CAPTCHA’s appearance is rare. It only appears as a “second chance” for someone the (aggressive) software already thinks is a spammer, Like Dr. Ken.
Mr. Gillar, it appears, also got blocked by the new anti-spam plug-in. He seemed to think it was a ban. I manually added him and Dr. Ken to the Allow list so they won’t be bothered further.
The new anti-spam engine has a list of DENY words, things associated with online gambling, etc. I used to maintain my own list of such words, but found them redundant to other anti-spam measured. I may take these out if they prove a problem.
I’m with ND. On some pages I have to refresh the Captcha image multiple times before I can get one I can read. They’re not made to be read by us folks with bifocals….
There are alternatives to the Captcha I could use.
Dr. C: naw, I’m OK. thank you though…
Faceman got snagged by the new plug-in too. That one I had to manually intervene for. I’ll keep tuning.
One the other hand, without Captcha, summoning Inglip will be quite impossible! 😉
I guess the spam blocker finds me boring.
Spam blockers have a shocker of a time with australianese, so most of them just give up.
Pig’s arse! I find Captcha tests are a piece of piss. Strewth, I mean fair suck of the sav! Just give it a burl.
My advice is to pour some of that amber fluid down yer cakehole and she’ll be apples. Just remember that them troolers ideas aren’t worth a zack. They got a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock, I reckon, and Buckley’s to come up with anything dinkum good oil.
*applauds*
Needs a few more jingos and crikeys, but beyond that, bewdy mate!
Holy smokes! That reads like a passage from Riddley Walker.
And I mean that as a compliment. 🙂