Over the past few weeks, something happened and my spam comment count went from about 100 per day to over 600 per day. I use multiple plugins to combat spam (Bad Behavior and Akismet), and they do a fabulous job catching the spam before it gets posted.
But they do occasionally catch the innocent commentator. This isn’t good. When the count was 100 per day, I could go through them and pull out the real comments. Now that it’s up to 600/day, I just don’t have time.
So I’ve implemented a “Captcha”. One of those goofy things that verifies you are a human before you can post a comment (here’s a cool paper from Carnegie Mellon on CAPTCHAs). I’ve seen some that use barely decipherable text images and they drive me nuts. So I went with a “math captcha”. (I’m looking for one that is similar but has provisions for the visually impaired — anyone know of one?) UPDATE: I found Pete’s Math Anti-Spam that has voice capability and have installed that.
In the current incarnation, it looks like this:
Just answer the simple math question and you’ll be good to go.
Sorry for the hassle, but it should help reduce the number of “false positives” from the spam catchers and let the real people comment freely.
I’ll try it for a few days and see if it helps (it already seems to be doing just that).
UPDATE: I found another math based captcha here. This is an example:
I think I’ll stick with the one currently in use. There was a time where I actually could have solved this. I made it (barely) through one semester Differential Equations in college, but I’ll be damned if I remember any of it…
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Steve Krzysiak 07.29.08 at 12:34 pm
Good luck with that. All the big guys have been hit(google, yahoo), if their teams of captcha engineers can’t stop spammers, then who can? See http://www.computerworld.com.a.....5;fp;;fpid;
Currently, I leave none of our blogs open to the public, which of course has it’s pros and cons.
The math of course can be cracked, but maybe if we developed a real estate equivalent of the math captcha, we’d be good to go. Think: ‘Agent A negotiates contract with age B….who pays the closing cost?’
Keahi Pelayo 07.29.08 at 12:49 pm
Thanks for the heads up. I am looking forward to hearing if the addition helps with the spam.
Aloha,
Keahi
Testing new captcha 07.29.08 at 1:36 pm
Just testing the new captcha form
Jay Thompson 07.29.08 at 1:41 pm
Steve -
That link leads to a main page, which has a BUNCH of links (great site BTW!). You wouldn’t happen to have another link direct to the article? I’d like to read it.
A real estate captcha…. problem is, people (agents included) wouldn’t be able to answer the questions 95% of the time!
There’s no question adding this has dropped (significantly) the number of comments flagged by Aksimet. If nothing else, it’ll make going through that flagged list a whole lot easier.
Steve Krzysiak 07.29.08 at 2:48 pm
You’re right, I should have double checked the link, it looked funny to me from the get go…
http://www.computerworld.com.a.....;489635775
Just like car alarms, captchas will always deter, but if someone wants your Shelby badly enough, they’ll get it. In fact, Nicholas cage made a movie about it
So lets hope your blog isn’t targeted by some big time determined spammers.
Sadly, most agents would fail, but not ours! (covering my behind)
Take care….
Monica 07.29.08 at 3:15 pm
Don’t you just hate those comment spammers? I get dozens every day. Fortunately my spam filter lets me blacklist a lot of the words most of them use. I don’t mind comments that actually say something decent, but the ones that are just garble, or just strings of words related to porn or drugs really get my goat! Good luck with your captcha comment spam trap!
Elaine Reese 07.29.08 at 8:04 pm
Glad you didn’t incorporate the Differential Equations math, although that would certainly cut down on spam … and any OTHER comments. That was funny.
Shailesh Ghimire 07.29.08 at 8:41 pm
It as after differential equations that I really started to question my commitment to a graduate degree in Physics. Instead I went to B. School. Much better.
bhatk 07.30.08 at 7:20 pm
If the spam programs can decipher the digits, they can easily tweak their spam bot to sum up 2 numbers and enter the total. But that happens when major sites adapt this total technique. Until then this works… Maybe you can enhance this with mixing some digits with the text.
BTW, I noticed a minor glitch here. When I click on the total box, cursor focus is moved to website text box (in firefox 3)
bhatk
Jay Thompson 07.30.08 at 10:03 pm
@bhatk “BTW, I noticed a minor glitch here. When I click on the total box, cursor focus is moved to website text box (in firefox 3)”
I see that now too… don’t suppose you know how to fix that?
Brad from Dakno 07.31.08 at 9:21 am
That’s a great point about making it friendly for the visually impaired. I use a math comment plugin but I think i will change to the one you mentioned. By the way, the other math protection is hilarious!
Las Vegas High Rise Guy 07.31.08 at 2:20 pm
Combating spam is like the arms race….there will always be a raising of the stakes. Look at it this way, your site is so valuable that its worth spamming. Now don’t you feel better!
Jay Valento - Long Beach real estate 07.31.08 at 6:53 pm
I wish I could eliminate the crazy spam I get in comments on our blog. I wonder who takes the time to fill out a form to leave so much junk. Do someone get paid to leave those crazy comments or is it automated some how?
Jay
Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy 08.01.08 at 11:54 am
Jay (great name BTW!) - almost all of the spam commenting is done by automated spambots. There are also likely places overseas where manual comment spam is done. The “captchas” will usually prevent the automated bots from posting. Spam catcher plugins have data bases with the overseas IPs and they do a pretty good job of blocking those.