I know some of you have blogs of your own. So how much comment spam do you get, anyway? The Mirabilis.ca total for 2007 is 28,651 28,745. Isn’t that insane?
Fortunately the Akismet plugin for WordPress takes care of it all for me, but still. Some days I go for dinner and come back to find 81 pieces of spam have arrived in thirty minutes. *sigh*
I used to get a lot of spam on my blog, but it’s not so bad lately. Maybe Movable Type is handling it well. However I get hundreds a day via email!! They are well sorted into the junk mail box, but still be deleted.
Happy New Year!!
I just had Askimet delete all the spam there was two days ago, Saturday afternoon. As of right now there are 1432 pieces of spam waiting to be deleted.
Comment spammers love me apparently.
I keep hoping that spammers will stop spamming blogs where their comments are never published, but no luck. I guess it’s easier for them to blast everybody than to discriminate in any way.
Well until that number I thought I got a tremendous amount of comment spam. Granted, given my hit count (less than 100 a day) it doesn’t look like much. But I’m usually good for between 85 and 150 each day.
The right thing to do I think is to have a plug-in that detects the spam “hot” (i.e. while the connection is open) then let the network connection time out instead of responding. But that’s a bit techy. I think it would make a dent though.
If people would keep their antivirus/spam scanning software up to date it would take a really big bite out of this problem.
It’s endlessly depressing. I wonder why they do it, too, given our refusal to publish. Every once in awhile I read a comment thread where there are some body part spam emails and wonder “what IS he/she thinking to let that mess through?”
I only have 3 Spams in the month since I started – I feel so inadequate!
Seriously, since Askimet works, maybe its just a badge of honor? 🙂
I rarely get spam because it is filtered by the good people at Typepad. One of the perks of paying for blog real estate. (Actually I don’t pay any more thanks to minimal advertising.)
I use Movable Type and have my comments set to login only (Typekey, OpenID, etc). When I had it otherwise set, I was getting notices from my server that the spam was oveloading my account. I don’t get as many comments with the login requirement, but it saves the hits to my server and me having to authorize good comments and delete the bad ones.
;o)
Thank you Suzi, Marja-Leena, Mad William, Michael, Mark, Sylvia, and Ms. Jen.
I’m glad that there are numerous approaches to dealing with spam, but I am still gobsmacked at the number of spammy comments that pour in. I find that ever-increasing number to be depressing.
Mad William Flint, I like your idea about letting the network connection time out when spammy comments are submitted. Have you suggested this feature to the Askimet people? Sounds like they’d love to hear from you.
[knock on wood] Since JournalScape has had the spam blocking procedure (commenter has to reproduce oddly shaped letters and numbers), I have had no spam. Before that, it was rampant. I can only hope the spammers have gone away (not likely) but at least they aren’t bothering us at JS. For the time being. It’s a pain to have to do the extra step to add comments, but worth it if it blocks the bad guys.
I use Blogspot, and I have had only one piece of comment spam slip through and require manual deleting in the last six months, I would say.
You don’t have to put up with that. Keep Askimet and add Bad Behavior. It’s cut spam on my blog to one or two a week (knock on wood).
I guess I’m more of a control freak than many of you: on Mirabilis.ca ALL comments are moderated, so no spam or stupidity slips through. Askimet sorts most of the spam into a separate list, and lets me delete all of that in an instant. The rest of the comments are ones I approve or reject manually.
This does have some disadvantages, like slowing down the conversation when I’m away from my computer. But then, Mirabilis.ca doesn’t get many comments, anyway. If it ever does, perhaps I’ll change my approach.
Thanks for telling me about Bad Behavior, Chris. I went and looked at that website, and it does sound interesting. Perhaps I’ll give it a try.