Drowning in Spam
Spam is the worst thing ever invented by man. It is completely useless and wastes my time. Nobody wastes my time except me. At least thermonuclear weapons may someday be used to blow up a planet-annihilating meteor heading our way like in Armageddon.
Before Akismet was added to WordPress as a default plugin, I manually moderated all comments. Those were the days when I was lucky to get a single comment for any post. After that Akismet took over and it worked fine for a while. I would still go through all the spam comments to check for false positives but at least Akismet ensured that comments from trusted sources (well, most of them anyway) appeared immediately without having to wait for my moderation.
Staring into the face of evil
Well, recently the increasing spam volume has made it impossible for me to check through them for valid comments. I’ve been getting nearly 1000 spam comments a day and I’m very, very certain that some of your comments have been eaten up by Akismet as false positives in the process.
So I have finally implemented an image verification system for commenting. I hate image verification systems, especially since half the time I can’t tell apart a capital “i” from a lower case “L”. But it’s the lesser of the many evils. An e-mail verification system is even more annoying, Akismet eats comments like Cookie Monster eats cookies and a forced registration policy will just turn lazy people like me off.
The good thing is that if you register an account and remain logged in, you won’t have to enter a security code when commenting. Hurray!
Oh well, hopefully this is enough to stop the spamage. Please tell me if you find any bugs with the verification system.
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Let’s see if this works… testing, testing.
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Testing, testing.
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:51 pm
We need something nice to make this system work well…. how about… you know… boobies!
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Test, test…..
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:51 pm
LAWL
SPAM SPAM LOL
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:09 pm
test test
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:16 pm
I think bad behavior would help a lot as well. I prefer it a lot more compared to capchas…
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:18 pm
man, this site is turning more and more like dannychoo.com …so wat’s next? mascot?
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Those had to be some of the BIGGEST fonts I have had ever seen for a registration page. ^^; I kid you not when I say I could have signed up without wearing my spectacles. ^^;
Cheers.
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:59 pm
pruning spam takes up most of my time. its a never ending hack and slash game, like vines that regenerate itself. after a while, the habit becomes addictive.
nothing less than a scorched earth policy against spammers
one day, you’ll feel that something is amiss when there’s no spam to clear.
March 3rd, 2007 at 12:12 am
let me help u to test .. haha
March 3rd, 2007 at 12:58 am
That sucks : /
Though…I usually get 500+ spam-mails a month to my gmail : /
March 3rd, 2007 at 2:06 am
Well, it works fine from this end. :)
March 3rd, 2007 at 2:55 am
Which version of WordPress you using?
Because when I upgraded to 2.1 it had a newer version of askimet and it seemed to decrease the number of spam for me. Also I think I’ve got Spam Karma 2 installed as well and I’ve got the severity set to ‘Kinda Mean.’
Not sure if those help but just doing the security code will help decrease the amount of spam you are getting.
March 3rd, 2007 at 3:04 am
Registered & logged in ~
[Quote]
Singapore Skane
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Those had to be some of the BIGGEST fonts I have had ever seen for a registration page. ^^;
[/quote]
+1
XD
March 3rd, 2007 at 3:44 am
Yikes, that is a huge amount of spam… can understand the need for the new system… and its really not that much different from the normal experience really…
March 3rd, 2007 at 6:12 am
You do realize that even moderately advanced spambots are going to have the capability to OCR your security image and get through the barrier. I’m curious as to how much actual spam reduction you’re seeing after implementing the CAPTCHA, and whether you’d consider using a more obfuscated image.
March 3rd, 2007 at 9:38 am
How does the system recognize spam from posts?
March 3rd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Use Spam Karma 2 with Akismet plugin. SK2′s probably the best anti-spam plugin out there yet and it’s done wonders for my blog. I think in all in all, it only failed me about 10-20 times.
Also, I guess I’ll register a User Level 1 account too.
March 3rd, 2007 at 2:25 pm
lets hope it works
March 3rd, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Test. Test. Testing… Testing 1, 2, 3….
Here is a question – are you doing this image verification alongside the the Akismet spam filter? So that you can still catch the manual spams?
March 3rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Is this security code thing permanent?? Coz this things always piss me off T.T
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:53 pm
hey!now I’m registered >_
March 4th, 2007 at 1:05 am
well lol
March 4th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Question: What if the spamming is done by a human who can enter the security code anyway?
anyway, 1000 spams per day is scarry….I didn’t even get 100 spams on my old forum…
March 4th, 2007 at 2:03 am
It works ^_^
March 4th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Spam. :D
March 4th, 2007 at 2:37 am
I’m pretty sure that Akismet does something to amplify or exaggerate the quantity of spam it reports. When I was just using MT-Blacklist, I used to get a couple dozen spams trapped per day. When I switched to WordPress and used WP Hashcash, maybe four spams would leak through per week (Hashcash didn’t report how many were failing). Since installing Akismet a couple months ago, it claims to have stopped around 30,000 spams. Nonsense.
Oh, and CAPTCHAs are horrible. Bad, bad, bad, bad.
March 4th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Ooh… All numbers….
Well, good luck with this. :3
March 4th, 2007 at 10:58 am
That is a lot of spam.
March 5th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Cool. Now everybody’s spamming with the security code.
March 5th, 2007 at 1:04 am
This is added hassle to your commenters.
March 5th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Well,let us hope this new system well decrease the amount of spam.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:38 am
I have the exact same problem. Was going to do a post about it but you beat me to it. Ok I shall do the same thing. Btw do you turn off Akismet now?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:23 am
Commencing test…
If you can read this that means it has succeeded in penetrating your final line of defence, therefore implying failure, as I have nothing important to say:P.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
SPAMTEST
.-.
March 14th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Test, test…
March 27th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Hey dude, try using Hashcash, I was using image-based verification on my blog and still spammers got through, after implementing Hashcash I had 0 spam!