Auto block ALL IP's indicated by Akismet?

I'm thinking of blocking all IP adresses indicated by Akismet as containing spam. Something like cronning

select distinct wp_comments.comment_author_IP
FROM  `wp_commentmeta` JOIN `wp_comments`
WHERE wp_commentmeta.comment_id = wp_comments.comment_id
  AND wp_commentmeta.meta_value='true'
ORDER BY wp_comments.comment_author_IP

and then adding the IP's automatically to .htaccess.

Even better, I would like to post the current list of 524 IP's to a webservice to be sure hundreds of other people are also blocking the same IP.

Is that smart?

update now checking with http://www.dnsbl.info/ . Interesting e.g. 109.105.192.194 is listed with one of the spam database but not others. So I probably need to write a plugin that auto blocks the IP and then refer them to DSNBL if they want to unblock themselves. IS there already a DSNBL plugin?

update apparantly (ofcourse) there is : http://wordpress.org/support/topic/visitors-checked-by-dnsbl

Topic akismet spam Wordpress

Category Web


Personally I highly recommend to not use IP blocks at .htaccess level. There are simply too many false positives possibilities for that to work reliably. I had encountered WP blogs (luckily wave of those seem to have faded) that just shut me out, accusing my IP of belonging to evil spamer... Static IP that belonged to me for years.

I especially don't recommend to use Akismet as source of data. Your mileage may differ, but as commenter I had experienced so many false positives with Akismet that I will never touch it as blogger.

What I do recommend:

  • use spam filtering methods or sources you are 100% confident will not produce excessive amounts of false positives;
  • do not block out by IP, send matched IP to spam and display informational message about why it was blocked and your means of contact.

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