Blog spam

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I've been getting a rash of blog spams lately as comments to my posts. I have my blog set up to email me any responses so that I can keep up with what's being said behind my virtual back. Turns out that was a good idea, because I was able to quickly go in and remove the posts. So far it's not too bad because the spam posts are relatively few. But if it really starts to pick up it's going to be quite annoying.

The best way to stop this is to do what many sites that allow posting now follow: force you to type in text displayed in an image. Right now anyone (anonymous or Blogspot user) can post a comment without being challenged. That makes it ideal for bots. Using a graphic word image should slow it down considerably, but it won't bring it to a complete halt. For example, you could hire a human to do it if you had to. Oh well. I will wait and see how this is handled. In the mean time I'll just keep weeding them out as fast as they appear.

Comments

  1. Ron FrazierOctober 03, 2005

    I started getting blog spam last night on my photography blog. First time I've ever received blog spam, so I wasn't quite on the ball with what was going on. It was a page where I was complaining about a problem with a product, and the post was very generic but seemed like it fit with what I had wrote, so I thought nothing of it. Then I got one this morning about some golf site, but my post was about photographing a lunar eclipse. Suddenly it made sense!

    By the way, did you know that blogger allows you to turn off anonymous comments so that only registered users can post? Didn't help in my case, but it probably does help cut down on it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ron FrazierOctober 03, 2005

    followup...just discovered there is already the option to have the "enter the text in this photo" option. It's under "settings...comments" and is called "word verification". Turn it on.

    ReplyDelete
  3. BillOctober 03, 2005

    Ahhhh.... Thank you, sir!

    ReplyDelete

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