Comment spam - John C. Kirk

11:53 pm - Comment spam

Last year I mentioned that I was receiving a steady stream of spam comments, so I turned on CAPTCHA for anonymous users. That helped for a while, but recently the situation has got a lot worse, and I now get about 10 spam comments per day. I get the email notifications, but then I have to click through to the website to delete those comments, which is a nuisance. Meanwhile, I've been getting spam email advertising "Blog Blaster" software, so I'm guessing that this is a growth industry.

So, time for a new plan. I've adjusted my account settings (on the Privacy tab), and I now only allow comments from "Registered users". According to the FAQ, this includes OpenID and Facebook accounts, not just LJ accounts. I've gone back to the start of the year, and I've only received 3 legitimate anonymous comments, so this shouldn't cause any major problems and hopefully it will stem the flow. If the spammers shift over to throwaway accounts then I'll start screening comments from non-friends. If it's still a problem after that then I'll restrict comments to friends only.

If anyone else is getting a similar flood of comments then you might want to apply the same settings to your account.