Comment Spam: Oh How I Hate Thee
November 20, 2004
If you have cruised through the archives in the past week or so, it is likely you have seen a comment that didn't quite fit in. It probably contained a link to Viagra, an online casino, car insurance, or any other subject that good 'ol email spam refers to. Basically, these bots go around and automatically drop comments on blogs like this, increasing their ranking with Google. Why? The more links Google sees to your site, the more likely it is to come up in search results. I have finally put them to rest (for now). Here's how I did it...
I have always had a problem here and there with comment spam, but nothing like the last week. I was getting in the area of 20 comments an hour. I started looking around for solutions. First, I changed the name of the perl script that runs the comment system in Movable Type. You also have to change the reference to that file in your mt.cfg file. Then Rebuild.
This worked for about 5 minutes, then it started again. Thankfully I found a useful plugin called MTCloseComments. The plugin let's you set many options that in the end close comments on posts that are older than a certain amount of days. I loaded it up, rebuilt my site, and haven't had a spam comment since. I'm not gloating though, but seriously thinking of either writing my own system to run my blog, or moving to WordPress.
So the moral of the story? If you want to make a comment, make it fast, or atleast within 21 days of the post :)
Filed under Rants, Technology
Comments
Jon Mark Allen says:
Unfortunately, comment spam is not restricted just to MT. I use WordPress and got hit hard in the last two months. However, WP does have some nice built in spam controls and plugins.
The comment moderation in WP is a great feature. If a comment has more than one link, it is forced to be approved (by me) before posting. That seems to be a necessary evil now days, but it's worked well for me (so far).
I've loved every minute of using WP. I, too, started with MT and haven't looked back since I left.
Anywho...God bless and keep up the good work.
Kyle Florence says:
I agree, I've been getting hit with it too, and I don't use MT or WP, I use something I wrote myself. It is quite annoying, but I don't know what to do about it. I don't feel like blocking off comments on older stuff, though that may be a solution, but lately they have been spamming on recent posts as well.. spam is taking over the internet, and I don't like it.
Comments are closed for this entry
paul p says:
interesting...while searching through some of the design blogs i subscribe to, there are quite a few problems with this comment spam...
good luck on eradicating the enemy from our email, cell phones, and now comment sections!