Spam Comment Control (or: Someone Needs to Get a Life)

21,359 comment spams in a little over six months, with most of those coming in the last three months. I’ve gotten comment spam for porn sites, pharmaceuticals, cut-rate mortgages, insurance and more. Over the past couple of weeks it seems that more spam has slipped though my filter. I loath spam and those that deliver it. Spammers are about as low a life form as the amoeba. But they are crafty buggers who are always looking for ways to “improve” their business.

To fight the spammers, I cranked up the sensitivity on Spam Karma 2 a notch. It helped some, but still isn’t where I want it to be. I’m trying to avoid installing a comment “captcha” system, because I find those things incredibly annoying. (A captcha is that goofy “type this number/word/whatever into this little box so we know you’re a human” thing.) Here’s a great blog post by Maureen Francis that expresses my feelings on captchas.

Note to commenters: the increased sensitivity in SK2 may mean your legit comment gets shoved into the “moderate” box. I’ll get your comment moderated as quickly as I can, but it will stay hidden until I do.

So I just armed myself with another anti-spam weapon, it’s a WordPress plug-in called Bad Behavior. It’s supposed to play well with Spam Karma and help squish those pesky spam bots. We’ll see how they do. If the spam continues to be an issue, we’ll hit it with something else. If any avid reader out there notices anything goofy, or sees any spam get through, I’d appreciate a little note (Thanks Jim!)

This is war, and the spammers will not win.

[tags]Bad Behavior, comment spam, Spam Karma, spammers suck[/tags]

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