November 07, 2004
Advice Needed
All of my blogs (Dr. Weevil, Curculio, Write It Right, and a couple of dormant spin-offs) are being inundated with a flood of comment-spam. Yesterday alone I deleted 200 comments from Dr. Weevil. Between the dial-up connection, the 6 1/2-year-old computer, and Earthlink's sluggish host-machine, it took over three hours.
I have turned off comments on all of my blogs except this one until I can come up with a foolproof spam-repellent. I'm using this one because it only has the one post, so any number of spam comments could be deleted very efficiently.
Advice is much appreciated, but please read these provisos first:
- Call me cheap, but I don't want to spend any money.
- If at all possible, the method has to work on MT 2.0 and 3.0. Though I don't recall the URLs, I've read more than one site-owner complaining that an MT upgrade had wiped out all his comments. I don't want to risk that, and have stuck with the versions I began with (2.0 for Dr. Weevil, 3.0 for the rest).
- Closing old comments doesn't seem to work. I have used the MT Editing menus to close hundreds of comments 'by hand' on both of my main sites, that is, I have unchecked 'allow comments' for each one individually. Nevertheless, spammers continue to leave comments on all of them.
(I even get comments attached to posts I haven't written yet. I don't know how that can be possible, but it happens. When I go into the Editing menu and delete a comment, I am taken to the post to which it was attached. About a quarter of the time, that post is blank.)
- I don't want to install a complex registration system. There are some sites I rarely visit any more because I've been unable to figure out how to leave a comment. I don't want to be like them.
- I would like to ask the commenter to type in a number displayed as a picture, so spam-spiders can't read it. Can any of my readers tell me how difficult this is to implement, and where to find the software?
Posted by Michael Hendry at November 7, 2004 11:29 AM
Is this thing turned on?
Testes, testes, one, two, . . . three?!
Sorry, I couldn't resist a Beavis & Butt-Head joke.
Try here:
http://james.seng.cc/archives/000145.html
I haven't installed it but Steve @ HogOnIce.com has and it seems to work well. Couldn't be that hard to install if he could do it. ;)
Comment spammers were my only companions, and they were often so polite ("Saw your blog! Wow!") that I forgave them their concern for the size of my, er, membership. But, sadly, you play and you play until somebody spams you a rape site.
At which point, don't even try to keep up.
I moved to blogger.
Not much good news; I'm also a spam victim.
I got spam-bombed on my MT 3.1 blogs. Tried MT Blocker, but couldn't get it to play nice with MT 3.1. -- it didn't work.
Got so bad that my webhost (ICDSoft) turned off my access until I could eliminate comments on my sites, which I did.
Something to do with the nature of the MT commenting software, I was told. End result is that I switched to WordPress, which allegedly is not as susceptible to spam multiplication issues on the server side.
Since WordPress is twitchy (I couldn't keep two blogs on the same server), I also opened my second blog on Blogspot. It all amounts to a lot of work just so some perverts can send many, many, msgs about rape, incest, poker, and lots of other obscene and unwanted stuff.
Bastards (the spammers that is, although I'm not real pleased with ICDSoft at this point, either...)
Several blogs, like Protein Wisdom and Tim Blair are using some software that requires the comment poster to copy a word or number that is presented in an image into a field.
Bots can't do that so it keeps the bots out of comments.
You would have to ask Andrea or Jeff where this software comes from. It should be easy to implement.
I have had a B2 blog spammed to the point I converted it over to Blogger. The blogger software strategy seems somewhat resistent to SPIDER spamming which by far is the most infuriating ! MT will have to address this soon since the problem has gotten expotentially out of hand this past year. The best solution is to use a graphics encrypted filter each guest uses to parrot a code for each comment to prevent spyders from leaving their "venom". I plan to reaserch and put information on my Support Forum shortly.... I run a Blog Ring and I am hearing more and more concern about this problem recently.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ZZ Bachman / The ZardozZ Portal
http://zardozz.com/zz/
Have a Blog ? Ring Surf it @ ZZ OpenRing http://zardozz.com/
Oh, the irony of following up a spam comment.
MT Blacklist has made it possible for
De Novo to stay afloat. It still requires 10 minutes every few days to clean off the newest mutations, but is much more efficient than the alternatives.
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Great discussion. Just a slight change in the subject. You may be interested in one of these seasonal tax topics:
Federal Income Tax - Federal Income Tax - http://federal-income-tax.irs-us.net ;
HR Block - HR Block - http://hr-block.irs-us.net ;
Income Tax Filing - Income Tax Filing - http://income-tax-filing.irs-us.net ;
Income Tax Online - Income Tax Online - http://income-tax-online.irs-us.net ;
Income Tax Preparation - Income Tax Preparation - http://income-tax-preparation.irs-us.net ;
Income Tax Return - Income Tax Return - http://income-tax-return.irs-us.net ;
Income Tax Software - Income Tax Software - http://income-tax-software.irs-us.net ;
Online Tax Filing - Online Tax Filing - http://online-tax-filing.irs-us.net ;
Online Tax Prep - Online Tax Prep - http://online-tax-prep.irs-us.net ;
Online Tax Preparation - Online Tax Preparation - http://online-tax-preparation.irs-us.net ;
Online Tax Return - Online Tax Return - http://online-tax-return.irs-us.net ;
Online Tax Service - Online Tax Service - http://online-tax-service.irs-us.net ;
Online Tax Software - Online Tax Software - http://online-tax-software.irs-us.net ;
Tax Calculator - Tax Calculator - http://tax-calculator.irs-us.net ;
Tax Cut - Tax Cut - http://tax-cut.irs-us.net ;
Tax Deduction - Tax Deduction - http://tax-deduction.irs-us.net ;
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Tax Return - Tax Return - http://tax-return.irs-us.net ;
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Thank you for your interest.