Use Verification To Limit Spam
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I think that WP should use one of those verification fields when a user posts a comment. You know, the one that gives you a combination of numbers and letters to enter? Other blog sites use them, and they are widely adopted on many commercial websites to prevent automated programs from accessing them.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: http://inrepair.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/verification.gif
Good idea or bad idea?
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Bad idea. If you do a forum search for “CAPTCHA” you will find many threads on the subject. The short form is: far less effective than Akismet (particularly against automated bots), and far more of a deterrent to posting comments.
Spammers are actually offering free porn to people who bust CAPTCHAs; it’s working very well for them. And they’ve busted Blogger/Blogspot’s CAPTCHA protection wide open.
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Ooooooooooh, I didn’t know that. I’m sure porn is a great incentive to alot of those young programmers. :)
I know TicketMaster also uses this technology, so I just assumed that it was pretty foolproof. Guess not!
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No, not by a long shot. But thanks for the tip: I could use tickets to the NIN concert. Hmmmmm…
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I want to weigh in and say that CAPTCHA is a challenge visually challenged bloggers can live without.
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I agree with timethief about the visual challenges. I sometimes have a difficult time with them and my eyesight is pretty good (with glasses).
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I hate captcha, but I hate getting over 1000 spam a day more.
I don’t know what the answer is, but Akismet isn’t enough.
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I use the ‘comment moderation’ textarea under Options->Discussion as a backup. Popping ‘hometown.aol.com’ and ‘geocities’ in there along with a list of obvious spam words generally ensures that the spam doesn’t show up on my blog even if Akismet drops the ball.
Of course, if Akismet is having a particularly bad day, my inbox gets flooded with emails telling me there are comments in moderation, but I can always switch off notifications. (The other option — using the ‘comment blacklist’ field — is too heavy-handed for my comfort, besides which I don’t know whether Akismet gets told about spam flagged that way.)
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That’s interesting, wank. I might even put google.com in there, as no real person uses that as a URL.
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I was going to ask the same question but as it’s already been answered I’ll just add a couple of thoughts if that’s cool. Is there no way we could use Akismet and a verification thing too? It’s just that in the the past few months my spam has gottn to scary levels and Akismet is doing a grand job, but I’m still getting loads of spam through, no matter how much I mark comments as spam. I’ve had to change my settings so that I have to moderate every email an it’s a pain when you have to mark dozens as spam. So why couldn’t we have an extra plugin to help a little? Maybe something like this http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060407-6554.html ?
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The images wouldn’t work. Anyone behind a broken proxy like most comcast users and me when I’m at one of the colleges I use see cached copies of those images. Plus those folks who can’t see the images to begin with like those folks who are blind or have to use text browsers. Plus then you have those who don’t speak english and couldn’t make heads or tails of what to do with those images.
Then of course we have the slave shops where Korens (or whatever nationality you want to use in there) make pennies a day to read those images.
By the way, thank you for ‘adding’ to the conversation. It’s rare around here that folks do that. More like a rehash or the same thing over and over again. Just look at the 5 (or is it 10) threads just today we’ve had on adsense.
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