What is the best way to keep spam bots in your blog?

Question

I have a problem in my blog. I received visits from good bots that leave “good” comments on my blog posts :(

I am wondering if there is a smarter way to save them besides using captcha modules. My problem with captcha modules is that I think they are anonymous to the user :(

I don't know if this will help anyone other than my site in asp.net mvc beta.

Answer 1

Have you thought about this?

http://akismet.com/

From your FAQ

When a new comment, trackback or pingback arrives on your blog, it is sent to the Akismet web service, which runs hundreds of tests in the comment and returns the thumbs or thumbs down.

This is a very easy to use system that I highly recommend.

Answer 2

I got lucky with Honeypots and Hashes .

If robots manage to successfully post a message, you can allow users to post messages without registering, captchas or false positives from akismet.

Answer 3

CAPTCHA is really simple. Perhaps it is always "orange"? I do not think that this has been done before.

Answer 4

Akismet is definitely the # 1 method I know to limit comments from spam. It’s also nice to offload it to a third party (at a reasonable price) .. so if a customer complains, just “change the blame”

Another option is to include something like a mod_security spammer signature file. They have a list of keywords for which you can scan the comment and post a message for moderation if you get a match. Although, if you had a bulletin board that discussed topics containing these keywords, you would need a lot of moderators. :-)

It is also possible to consider scanning IP addresses and matching them with SpamHaus or DCShield block lists. We recently started this approach, and it did wonders.

Things that don't work: registration required, simple captcha, user agent ... they can be automated or defeated by cheap labor.

Answer 5

I think you have several options ...

• Requiring registration to post comments - but this is more annoying than captcha, so probably not the best idea

• Examine the poster user agent (see here ) for something that looks authentic or excludes those that look suspicious.

• Use a good Captcha. As annoying as they are, properly used, they are not so bad. It took me 7 attempts to sign up for Gmail the other day, because I just could not read what he said. Good captcha, although in fact it is not so bad, it was short and READABLE

Answer 6

If the spam you receive is harder, you can assume that any comment containing> = 2 links is a spam comment and does not publish it on the blog unless the author approves them. This is what most comment plugins do. I am currently working on blogging software, and I made this decision in the interim until I can fully integrate akismet.

Answer 7

I spammed someone else's problem using Disqus to run blog comments. Since the transition, there has been no spam; Disqus has held onto it.

Answer 8

Akismet advised a few answers, but I disagree and will consider captcha's dynamic approach for the better.