Blog Comment Spam

It seems that 10-20 times a day I get “comments” on blog entries that are pure spam with links. It is SO annoying having to delete those. The thing is, they are different every time so I can’t set up filters or something.

Anyone have any good ideas of how to prevent this?

18 Responses to “Blog Comment Spam”

  1. Sir On The Edge Says:

    An IP filter would work. Or a login system.

  2. Parveen Says:

    I use the kismet plugin for wordpress. It’s fairly easy to setup and catches about 95% off the spam that I get.

  3. Hatge Says:

    Perhaps add such a thing, where you must enter Chars/numbers given in a picture.

  4. Buggo Says:

    Do you think that would deter people from posting more though?

  5. Sir On The Edge Says:

    IP: Hard to implement and there are ways round it but it would catch most of it.

    Login system: This would force the person doing it to use a new email every time (one that workes) and could also add there IP to a database.

    Kismet plugin: I don’t know enough about it to give input but read up on the sucsess rate and how often it comes up with false positives.

    Chars/numbers: This is only useful to deter hackers from stealing information about a user.

  6. Artofwar420 Says:

    Hire a spam deleting monkeh.

  7. chahyunun Says:

    nuclear bombs…………………….

  8. eFTy Says:

    Get an assistant to do it. Then you will officially have a Community Relations department (you and your assistant).

  9. PULSTAR Says:

    A friend of mine keeps a WP blog, and he’s added a “captcha”, I guess you call it, where you have to solve a (simple) arithmetic problem before you make a post. Doesn’t add more than a few seconds to the posting process, you do it when you fill in your name + e-mail address.

    Next time I talk to him, if you’re interested, I’ll find out if he used a plug-in (probably) or scripted it himself.

  10. Pyros Says:

    Parveen’s suggestion of Kismet looks really good. It seems to compare the submitted comments with their massive spam database, so it’s always up to date (and hopefully effective). And it shouldn’t bother normal posters at all unless their posts consist only of “buy chinese WoW gold free window frames bikes children viagra”

  11. Mason Says:

    I highly recommend Akismet at http://akismet.com/ . It’s already built into your wordpress blog, you just need to get the free API key from their site.
    You may also want to us a Turing test to trick the bots, a good one is found at http://www.herod.net/dypm/

  12. Hatge Says:

    I mean the same like PULSTAR:
    Adding a picture where a Human must read a combination of numbers/letters (example: http://www.cnchq.de/index.php?content=news&comments=4737#newcomment)

    I think thats a very good Spam-Bot protection.

  13. Shane Says:

    I use the Captcha! plug-in on my blog and it works great. Much better than Akismet on its own.

  14. slother Says:

    Try to use plugin called “Spam Karma” (http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/), i use it on my own blog and it works great :)

  15. Finaldeath Says:

    One option which hasn’t been suggested is to moderate everything that is posted, not an ideal solution however since it requires high amounts of time investment (but does mean you read everything, heh).

    Captcha’s are usually better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA

  16. IBBoard Says:

    One of my friends uses Akismet with his Wordpress blog and he’s happy with it. The idea is good (centralised spam database) although it does mean the first people to get hit by a new style of spam won’t get it blocked.

    I added some of my own hand-crafted keyword blocking to my b2evo blog when I had it, but it kept requiring the odd bit of tweaking to get it working. Trackbacks were also slightly more difficult as you couldn’t block their entered website so easily.

    The only other option is some minor change to the form. A lot of bots seem to screen scrape to check the page is about what they expect, but then submit the defaults. I changed my “agreed” variable on my forum registration to be “Agreed” (just one letter changed case) and it’s blocked _all_ spam!

    Captcha can be useful, but it’s probably most server intensive and most awkward for users.

  17. Buggo Says:

    Thanks guys! I tried Askimet and it is AWESOME. So far it has caught all the spam!

  18. pens Says:

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