Solving Comment Spam

Not too long ago, I turned off comments on this blog. For some reason, Movable Type doesn't close comments for any post already containing comments, so I've been having a steady influx of comment spam on some of my older posts. While I only receive one or two comment spasm per day, this could quickly become more annoying than the spam in my inbox. I ban the IP address associated with post, in hopes of minimizing future posts, but it may be time for a group effort to stop this nonsense.

I'm no fan of public IP blacklists for e-mail, they've never worked effectively, because they always involve one or two individuals deciding what gets through and what doesn't. Spamcop is only slightly better, allowing the accused to get off the list if they can prove they didn't spam. Those are of course, "solutions" for the e-mail spam problem. Comment spam is different.

In looking at various forum posts discussing the comment spam problem, many MT users are finding the same IP addresses as spam originators. What we need is an IP banning plug-in for MT, allowing users to access a public list of banned IP addresses, in addition to their own personal list, which may contain IP data that is banned for reasons other than spam. To improve the accuracy of the list, there would need to be some level of voting to determine a banned IP. I'm not sure what the correct threshold would be, but if as few as 25 people reported the same IP address for spamming, chances are, the person associated with the IP probably did commit comment spam. Ideally, the MT plug-in could allow you to choose a tolerance threshold, like only banning IP addys with more than X-number of votes, where X is chosen by the individual user.

Posted by Jake

Feedback

Solving Comment Spam

Recent Entries