3 Spam – blocking Tips

November 20, 2009

Example of a graffiti "tag"

Some examples from my online week:

  • trackback on this site for “international calling cards”
  • 88 spam comments this week (I only posted twice)
  • including some sneaky ones, like “I hadn’t heard of this before!  I will be back for sure!” from “00211234@gmail.com”
  • went to a website yesterday that told me I had a “virus” and had a pop up window that I could NOT close except for closing down the browser.  (I am currently running a malware scan in the background to see what kind of interesting tidbits THAT site left for me.)
  • 67 Spammy Emails yesterday to just my personal account only (not gmail)

Up until recently I also had 100′s of false registrations on this blog every week.  It was getting over the top.  Here are some tips to get a handle of the nuisance:

  1. Disable registrations on the blog.  Personally, I don’t see any reason to have another username and password attached to my blog.  So this lets any reader leave a comment with simply their name and email.  As well, most browsers will cache the email and username so a reader will only begin to enter the details and have it automatically fill in the spaces.  By disabling the registration you will prevent any of those false registrations.
  2. To get rid of spammy comments, be sure that you have Akismet activated, and configured! You need to sign up to the wordpress.com site.  This site you DO need a username and email for.  The confirmation email that you receive will have an API KEY.  You need this api key.  It will connect you to the wordpress.com spam database.  Your comments will be compared to the millions in the database and will be classified as “spam” as appropriate.  Enter your unique API key into the Akismet settings screen under “plugins” >> “Akismet Configuration”.
  3. If you are still getting too many spam (employ this carefully):  use an “Are you human?” question & answer, or a captcha image (those distorted words that robots can’t read) that needs to be verified.

Do you use another plugin?  Do you manage to block 100% of spam/false comments & registrations?  I’m totally curious.

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