Eat Your Spam

I just delete it, I guess I don't get too much at the moment though..

I moderate my posts because my blog was attacked with threats and spam so severe that the FBI became involved.

I'd rather have my reader wait a while for their post to appear than have them have to wade through all the crap that people can leave.

I recently installed a new filtering system and hoping that I soon can have comments posted right away.

I cook my own spam :D Seriously,I let Akismet handle the spam in my blog. If ever there are comments that are moderated by Akismet, this is because that the particular link or email used in the comment have been rated before as spam. I check the moderated comment and look at the link and if it is legitimate then I approve. Some comments are legit even though it has been reported as spam in other blogs(for reasons I don't know why) so I check them if I have time. Yesterday, I have marked at least 10 moderated comments as spam so that Akismet will have a log of the url and email. This will prevent the spammer from getting through other blogs.

I can remember a time when SPAM was only found in email. When my friends and I started finding SPAM blog comments appearing on our blogs, we were baffled. The comments were easy to manage at first and manually delete; however, over time the comments grew from a few a day to hundreds per week. I remember going into PHPMyAdmin numerous times and deleting them directly from there, nearly resorting to purging the contents of my comments table on a few occasions. It was out of hand.

I eventually learned of the Wordpress plug-in Aksimet, which I have been using for a few years and has worked magnificantly for me. Aksimet occasionally misses a few comments, but that is a small price to pay when you figure that it has caught thousands and saved me the trouble of manually deleting them.

As far as CAPTCHA is concerned, I can't stand it. Of course I understand why people must resort to using it on their websites, but it is obnoxious!! The CAPTCHA that you have on your page here isn't bad because it is legible; however, the CAPTCHA codes with the scrambled letters and numbers are so difficult to read at times and really have to go.

Askimet cacthes most of my spam comments and I also moderate first time commentators. If I have approved a comment from you previously subsequent comments get posted immediately. For awhile askimet seemed to catch everything but lately one or two spams make it to the moderation queue each day. I'm just thankful it hasn't been a bigger problem for me.

@Lady Banana - Yes, that's what we've also had to do..delete, delete and delete! PS: Thanks for sharing your personalDNA report on your site :)

@Leisa Watkins - I can totally understand why you have had to take the sort of action for your comments. It must have been a pretty severe case for the FBI to get involved! I've also read your stalking story on your site - you've been through a lot and I hope your life is now much better :)

@Louie - Glad to hear you cook your own spam too! :P
The method you are using seems really good for filtering spam, thanks for telling me about Akismet.

@Anna - Yes we recently installed the math captcha as it was the most simple type. I totally agree with you, some of the other captcha codes are really hard to read. I have good eye sight and I tend to also enter in the wrong code most the time and have wondered how other people with worse vision actually cope!

@Alan - Akismet seems to be a favourite with a few people. It's also good to know that you have your own process that you go through for your site - thanks for the tips!

I do use a spam filter called "tan tan noodles", which allows you to define the words you want to filter.

I truly hate spammers because I have to go in and delete the comment. Frankly, I would rather hear something that's negative but a live person so I could answer it than to have spammers put garbage up that makes no sense to the post in question. BAH!! Spammers would, indeed, be better off actually writing a comment. It would be noticed more and allowed!!! What a concept!

Thank you for writing this post!

@Doctor D - Thanks for telling us about the "tan tan noodles" spam plugin. It's great how you can further define the sorts of words to keep an eye out for, that could potentially be spam so you can catch it more easily.

@Jaz - Yeh, if spam comments actually made a bit more sense, I'd actually read it! Thanks for stopping by.

I, too, use Akismet. Without it I don't know what I'd do. One of my blogs is a particular magnet for spam. At first it was porn, but more recently it's MP3 links. Similar message and always 5 links. It receives hundreds and hundreds a day. AND...I feel so violated and angry that people don't have better things to do with their time and energy. Why not actually do something productive and positive????? Also, over the course of dealing with this spam issue, I've deleted a couple of legitimate comments and that just infuriates me! Sorry for the rant - this was a timely post for me!

Love your blog...I'm glad I found it!

@Seeker - Yeh, a lot of people are using Akismet and find it very useful too. It is very frustrating and rather disheartening, when you try to sift through the spam and then accidently delete the legitimate ones that's for sure!

I love your 'Curiously Awesome' site, it has really good content that is very thought provoking. I really support sites that have their own originality and allows a person to assess life/things/situations around them. See you again soon :)