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| To Err is Human »
April 15, 2004
COMMENT SPAM
Some of you might have noticed that occasionally, I get spam in the comments of this site, usually offering to sell things of varying legality. A while ago, I installed MT Blacklist, which rejects comments based on a blacklist of phrases or URLs. This is a neat idea, but I've realized that I simply can't predict what URLs to place in my blacklist, mostly because they're often non-sensical or only slight variations on each other.
I'm keeping MT Blacklist running, but in order to further prevent comment spam, I installed this little Movable Type plugin which generates an image with a random 6-digit number on each comment posting form. Each time you post a comment, you have to type this number (sort of like the random words you have to type in when you buy tickets from Ticketmaster.) This is basically just a simple test to see if there is an actual person writing the comment rather than an automated script. I hope it's not a huge inconvenience to anyone.
[02:37 PM]
+++++
Ahhh.. my computer brain is so sophisticated I can read numbers!
On a related, but tangential note: are all of the spam counts on your main page up to date, or have you really gotten only one spam on one account? It was such an interesting idea...
No, they are not accurate. I also thought it was an interesting idea, but I was too lazy to follow through with it. But I just checked and the count for account #1 is actually 4, and the other two accounts have been suspended for lack of activity. Whee!
Okay, now I feel like a dork for my above comment. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut from now on. (Or would that be keeping my fingers shut? Damn interweb.)
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