[wp-hackers] Comments automatically being marked as spam

[Jeremy Clarke]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Potkanski, Jason
<jpotkanski at tribune.com> wrote:
> http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-recaptcha/changelog/
> http://www.blaenkdenum.com/2010/03/recaptcha-marking-all-comments-as-spam/

Those links point out that 2.9.7 is a VITAL upgrade to the recaptcha
plugin! They changed the nature of their service and updating the
library is mandatory or all comments are marked as spam. In my testing
I was actually still seeing the all-spam behavior with 2.9.7, but
updating the recaptchalib.php file from the recaptcha google code site
(not the wp one but the core one) made it start working again. YMMV
but manually getting the most recent version of the library is the
safest bet.

If you're not sure then try disabling recaptcha and see if its still happening.

ANYONE WHO USES RECAPTCHA TAKE NOTE! THIS IS A NIGHTMARE! You need to
upgrade right away and go through your spam queue to find the real
comments. Filtering for just comment_type=comment makes it a lot
easier (as trackbacks aren't affected and you might have a lot of
them).

I bet your trackbacks actually are mostly spam, did you try testing a
totally legitimate trackback?

-- 
Jeremy Clarke
Code and Design | globalvoicesonline.org