spammers suck

[ratcreature]

There has been a sharp increase in spam comments in my LJ and an also some on DW. I screen anon comments, but having to delete amd report bunches of them is getting rather tedious. Okay, it's a couple every day, so not a flood, precisely, but still. I don't like the idea of turning off anon comments entirely, but if this keeps up, I'm not sure what else to do. Has anyone else noticed more spam than usual recently, or is it just me?

Comments

[giandujakiss]

Do you have captcha turned on for anon comments? I did that on Dreamwidth and the spam stopped.

[ratcreature]

That hadn't occurred to me, because I dislike captcha so myself. Half the time I can't make out the words myself, and fail the test, but I suppose it is better than turning off the anon comments entirely.

[jumpuphigh]

I haven't gotten any spam as comments on DW. I have the box checked that says Attempt to block outside search engines from indexing my journal, so maybe that helps.

[ratcreature]

That might be it. I have my journal indexed and generally try to get high exposure exposure for it by crosslinking it to my website and such, so that I get read.

[musesfool]

I haven't gotten spam on DW, but it has definitely increased on LJ.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, for me it is more on LJ too, but I had a couple on DW. Not every day though. I've now turned on these captcha tests commenters pointed out, maybe that'll help. I hadn't thought of them, because I'm not happy when I encounter them myself, because they are not accessible for everyone, and even though I can see the images and am human I still fail them semi-regularly. But the spam is annoying too, and it's better than turning anon comments off entirely.

[astridv]

I not only screen anon comments, I also log their IPs *and* I got captcha turned on. In spite of all those hoops to jump through, I got three or four spam comments in the last week or two. Which makes me wonder about the kind of dedicated-yet-deeply-stupid spammer we're dealing here. I'm assuming a bot can't get past the captcha? So it's gotta be a real person? Who should know there's no way in hell their blatant spam comment will ever get unscreened anyway so why waste both our time. Boggling.

eta: those were all LJ, nothing on DW.

[ratcreature]

I've heard that some captcha methods are broken and can be solved by bot, though I suppose it could also be outsourced and they pay humans to solve captchas en masse, which then are reported back to the spam bot or something. Either way it's depressing. But like you I'm truly baffled what is gained. I mean, they don't even all have links in them. Sometimes it's just random sentences. It makes no sense.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

i haven't noticed more spam that normal...

LJ has an option which lets you put a 'human test' on anon comments. That cut down my spam pretty significantly when it had reached the point where I was considering locking down the whole journal. POssible DW has the same.

[ratcreature]

Yes, someone on DW pointed that out too, and I have now turned that on. I hadn't thought of it, because I hate these captcha test because I often can't make out the words myself and fail them, but it's better than turning off anon comments entirely.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

yes, I have also on occasion proved that I am inhuman.

[ratcreature]

And that's even when you see okay. I mean, there are plenty of people for whom tiny warped letters suck because they need large letters to be able to see anything or can't see, and from what I heard the audio ones are even harder to make sense of than the visual ones. I once listened to one after I was frustrated that I failed the visual one twice, and I didn't understand anything except the instructions, there was just some kind of warbling background noise, and I recognized the places were the words were spoken, but with the noise I couldn't make sense of them. And I suppose if you display your internet in braille or something, because you don't hear or see well, you are completely out of luck. Really, spammers have a lot to answer for that they make this necessary.