Thought Experiments : The Blog

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Spam - Help!

First things first - why am I getting so many spam comments? My post Sightings of Worried Man in Blue Car seems especially popular with spam that seems to be advertising WOW Gold, which, prolonged introspection suggests, may be something to do with World of Warcraft, a time murderer for idiots. I thought word verification was supposed to stop this. Any ideas?

# posted by Bryan Appleyard : 7:33 AM  

12 Comments:

  • At January 13, 2009 8:59 AM, Blogger ian russell said…

    don't know but I suspect word verification security is so old it's about as useful as a chocolate fire guard. It's only going to hinder humans.
    As a celebrity blogger you are going to attract more interest. Maybe you need to use a unique blogging platform rather than one from Blogger.
    I'm guessing, of course.

     

  • At January 13, 2009 9:05 AM, Blogger Brit said…

    Celebrity? That's pushing it.

     

  • At January 13, 2009 9:06 AM, Blogger Bryan Appleyard said…

    I agree, Brit, what about 'mandarin' - Mandarin Blogger sounds good

     

  • At January 13, 2009 9:27 AM, Blogger ian russell said…

    he's been on Richard & Judy, don't you know?

    (...for want of a better word, then. I'm word thick and haven't got time to peruse the thesaurus).

     

  • At January 13, 2009 9:29 AM, Blogger ian russell said…

    media blogger! it's all coming back to me now....

     

  • At January 13, 2009 9:46 AM, OpenID elberry said…

    A bindrune of Elhaz and Thurisaz?

     

  • At January 13, 2009 10:30 AM, Blogger malty said…

    You only need worry when DFS hacks into your blog. Rename it "The Mandelson Hour" who would want the deposit spam in that?

     

  • At January 13, 2009 10:59 AM, Blogger Mark said…

    My understanding is that almost all captcha systems (word verification) have long been cracked by the spambot crowd.

    I don't know what the Blogger system allows by way of discouraging spammers. Other systems can be set to ask you to answer a simple question, like adding 12+6 for example, which is intended to foil the automated attacks. Maybe there's an add-in for this?

    Wordpress and some other platforms run a system whereby any comments are checked against a web service like Akismet or Mollom to see whether they look like spam. If they do, the comment is deleted or held for moderation. Again, I don't know whether Blogger has a similar system nor whether this method is actually effective.

    There are a few other tricks, like adding hidden fields, but if effective (I've never tried it) that's one for your cyberwonks.

    It may be worth looking at a different system, like Wordpress which also allows you to host a blog on their servers. Or, asking your cyberwonks to take a look at other platforms - Typepad, Drupal, etc. - and hosting yourself, stand-alone. Changing might mean more work and more expense, though.

    As Ian says, I suppose the problem is that a popular, well-known blog is always going to attract more attention.

     

  • At January 13, 2009 11:41 PM, Blogger mutleythedog said…

    You could sit on line all day and intercept all comments yourself in real time... it works for me!!

     

  • At January 13, 2009 11:41 PM, Blogger mutleythedog said…

    wheres the butter?

    see that got through


    ... hey?

     

  • At January 14, 2009 2:08 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    1915

     

  • At January 15, 2009 8:21 AM, Blogger Matthew Cain said…

    I'd strongly recommend migrating to wordpress and using Akismet which gets rid of 99% of all spam. If you need help doing it, let me know.

     

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