30
Oct

Spam, spam, and spam.

posted by gchatz 25 comments

Last time I checked spam meant robots. Stupid little applications from brilliant people gone the wrong way. That was the last time I checked and it was a long time ago. Lately spam is generated by Oompa Loompas with enough intelligence to override captchas and all that jazz. Below is the log of my attempts to limit spam on this blog.

Desperate try 1: Trickery

I wanted to avoid captchas because I hate them. So I did some research and discovered some seemingly nice tricks to avoid spam. Hidden fields, randomized field names, timestamps, md5s you name it. The Oompa Loompas started spamming immediately and half a day later the spam bots followed.

Desperate try 2: Captchas

Recaptha is king , right? Help your blog and the world on top. Did it work? No. The Oompa Loompas started spamming immediately. They were filling the captcha fields with the valid words (mostly ips from China).

So far so good: Akismet

Rakismet is a nice plugin for rails, that uses the Akismet service. It’s very easily configurable and you can run it against all your comments to filter out spam in an automated way. You can also support feedback to the Akismet service by using the ham! and spam! methods.

The (sad) stats

This blog-my mom and other relatives are forced to read- has 100 visitors / day in the best case (200 pageviews/day), so it’s not exactly popular. Yet it still accepts some 5k spam attempts per day (luckily akismet will only let one or two slip through). I wouldn’t be surprised if a stat came out stating some 50% of todays internet activity is spamming and even the big players are having a hard time fighting it

Comments (25)

Pin venlix said on Nov 02, 12:03 PM:

Why you don't add a rel="nofollow" attribute to all links in the comments? That would make it less interesting for spammer to post comments on this blog.

Pin handicapped said on Jan 06, 08:18 PM:

Venlix, by making all comment links nofollow you penalize honest commentors who put a valid link to their websites. Its like a small thank you by the blog owner for posting a relevant comment to their post. A nofollow blog is far less commented on because most people who leave genuine comments are other bloggers who like to get a link to their own blog. Its all a part of blogging and the whole social structure built around it.

Spammers are generally lazy and stupid creatures and tend to try and place a load of links in each comment they post, which is easily filtered out by askimet (or raskimet if you're using rails) so is very effective at stopping it happening.

Anyway, good post and it does need saying!

Pin Andrew said on Jan 20, 12:06 AM:

I don't think you penalize people by adding a nofollow attribute for all of the comments on the website. I think it will improve the overall quality of all the posts. By leaving the links as a dofollow, people are making a comment just to steal the PR that you've earned on your website. If people find your link informational or useful, they will still view your website and check out what you're offering // read your blog. All of the anti-spam verifications in the world isn't going to stop a determined spammer.

Pin GoMe said on Jan 27, 08:27 AM:

Spam = Delete very simple

Pin العاب said on Jan 27, 04:24 PM:

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Pin denizz said on Feb 03, 09:18 PM:

did some research Thank you for your topic

Pin Dizi İzle said on Apr 10, 03:01 PM:

Thank you this information.

Pin mp3 dinle said on Apr 10, 04:25 PM:

You're right, spammers are everywhere :(

Pin Dental jobs said on Apr 12, 11:19 AM:

other bloggers who like to get a link to their own blog. Its all a part of blogging and the whole social structure built around it.

Spammers are generally lazy and stupid creatures and tend to try and place a load of links in each comment they post, which is easily filtered out by askimet (or raskimet if you're using rails) so is very effective at stopping it happening.

Anyway, good post and it does need saying!

Pin Adam jones said on Apr 21, 09:48 AM:

Spamming is major problem for every webmaster and blog owner nowadays. However, plugins like Akismat and use of captchas are great to reduce it.

Pin mp3 song free download said on Apr 26, 12:29 PM:

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Pin Gol Videolari said on May 01, 07:26 PM:

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Pin 640-802 said on May 12, 07:31 AM:

no spam.don't this

Pin Stereolithography said on May 14, 06:52 AM:

With spam being the “menace” of every computer user, I am sure your suggestions will be welcomed by everyone with open arms!! It is most frustrating when you log on and find spammers by the dozen!! It is a major problem and if there plugins like Akismat and use of capachas can do the trick, it will be a boon to computer users like us - we couldn't thank you enough!! I am sure there will be many comments on you blog and a lot of appreciation coming your way! Very good work and hope you come up with more ideas like this!!

Pin refurbished cubicles said on May 18, 04:27 PM:

I wanted to avoid captchas because I hate them. So I did some research and discovered some seemingly nice tricks to avoid spam. Hidden fields, randomized field names, timestamps, md5s you name it. The Oompa Loompas started spamming immediately and half a day later the spam bots followed.

Pin Dental Jobs said on May 20, 11:24 AM:

Spamming is out of control though nowadays. It's an extremely lazy way of blogging and in fact and non educational way. Blogging you can gain so much experience from subjects which I knew nothing about initially. Blogging has actually became my life..sounds sad, buts its true.

Pin atics said on May 31, 07:37 AM:

dear, your site is dofollow to getrid from spammer it is better using nofollow rel :)

Pin voip softphone said on Jun 02, 06:24 AM:

Recommended to use akemist, i have tried it and have the good effect for the spammer.

Pin توبيكات said on Jun 18, 04:00 PM:

your text is good .. thanx for all

Pin ايجي said on Jul 01, 05:29 PM:

I like your post anf your blog is just awsome.

Pin منتديات said on Jul 03, 01:05 PM:

thanks a lots

Pin جحا said on Jul 08, 03:35 PM:

Keep working ,great job!
Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again - taking you feeds also, Thanks.

Pin vehicle shipping said on Jul 10, 05:40 AM:

So you finally gave up did you?

Pin صدفة said on Aug 05, 10:14 AM:

Pin seo said on Aug 08, 07:46 AM:

thank you,very much.

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