Sunday, March 7, 2021

Spam Countermeasures May Be Required 😳

I have been scrolling back through some old blog posts and found that i was the victim of a major spam attack by Dr. Emu, Vampire, Dubai Carpet Cleaners, and some other naer do wells. I went back six months to clean the comments up.

I have decided that it is necessary to take the unwanted step of implementing comment moderation on this blog. I hate to do it, but maybe this will keep the spammers away if they can’t post their comments on my blog.

There are several alternatives and I thought that it will be helpful to get some feedback from the Hive Mind.

#1) Complete Moderation = I review all comments before posting them.

#2) install the Captcha filter = you have to pick out traffic lights and bicycles from some squares before you can post.

#3) moderation applied only to posts that are more than 14 days old = this makes it harder for Dr. Emu to go back several months to spam old posts.

I just turned on #3 moderation but am thinking of selecting one of the first two options for two weeks just to see what will happen. #1 might enable me to see how much spam comes in. #2 might eliminate it completely, although it is a pain in the butt for my readers.

Your thoughts please.

Your Enlightened Despot, About to Go Bonkers

15 comments:

  1. captcha is fine. Lurk far more than I post.

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  2. I have seen a sudden increase to one-two per day in SPAM from a particular Education Board but not much else. I set moderation only for posts more than four days old and that stops most of it. But, YMMV.

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    Replies
    1. Jon: that is a good idea and so I've changed moderation to posts more than four days old. I found that in the past, some spammer would visit like a month or two after the post and then start posting junk for posts covering a 4-6 month period.

      Jim (DAF)

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  3. The spam is a but it and miss on blogger. I was deluged in it a few months back but it has been fairly quiet recently, although I had a bit last week. I just review the comments regularly and tag/delete spam. Hopefully that will help train Google spam detection algorithms. I've got capt ha on for comments (I think)

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  4. I have gone for the nuclear option of reviewing posts before publishing. Partly because I don't have huge number of followers and partly because I quite like to know when comments are posted as I often want to respond. To be fair I have actually had very little spam to filter out though.

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  5. I don't mind, Jim. Captcha is fine, and many other fine blogs employ it. Spam is a pain! Cheers, Rohan.

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  6. Not familiar with Blogger's options, but in WordPress you have the option to moderate someone's first post to your blog, and then give them the ability to post un-moderated after that.

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  7. Its a real pain Jim. I seem to have attracted some clown from Malaysia who is forever post crap.

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  8. I was similarly plagued by spam. Annoying and some embarrassing. I NIW have to approve all comments. A sad comment to our times.

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  9. Approve ALL posts or Captcha...

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  10. I will accept any action you take, I have seen some of your spam, and I sympathise!

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  11. Captcha works, and it’s not an undue burden to your readers. If that fails, then moderate all posts. Honestly, I think spamming is only going to get worse, so whatever it takes...

    Bill

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  12. I did 3 recently and it's got rid of the majority of problems.
    Captcha is an awful solution (and not terribly access friendly IMO)

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  13. Spam is EVIL! How they can dare? Isn’t life complicated enough anyway? But, ok dear friend, let’s do as you see fit.
    Approving all posts wouldn’t be bad, if it not too much work for you, and it would mean you could answer more comments! :D
    Failing that I think that the captcha thing comes next, not my favorite, but possibly does the trick

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  14. I have had this SE Asian spamming on my blog too. I get an email for all comments so can spot them the same day and go into "delete forever" which gets rid of that one but they sometimes come back (by robot I think!). I hate captcha it is tedious and hard to see. Likewise limiting time - 2 weeks is better than 4 days as it takes me some time to catch up with so many good blogs. If you moderate you can be on top of all your fans' comments Jim, good for the mental well being.

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