Comment Spam Blockers

I thought I was the only one getting the strange messages in my comments section. However from the posts I got, it seems there are a lot of you out in Nerdland experiencing the same thing. These messages spout how much some anonymous person likes my blog for topics that I didn’t write about and then links to obscure pages I don’t trust. I’ve deleted about six just this week. And the trend seems to be getting worse. Just about everyone that I have linked to have had similar problems.

Well, being the nerd and all I started to research. Here’s a few of the interesting things I found so far. It seems the whole reason for this blog comment spamming is to increase a website’s search engine results because the more it is linked to, the more popular it appears. There is a tag that you can include that will tell search engines not to include the links when considering a site’s popularity. It’s kind of like saying don’t count this post – it’s trash. However, I don’t know if the signed in users will get counted either when you use it. This page will show you how to put in the “don’t count this link” tag in your blog.

That’s all fine and good. So it won’t be counted, but it won’t stop the posts either. So I dug some more. I thought everyone might find this interesting. It appears that google, msn, yahoo, and Six Apart will be working together to create a comment spam blocker. But a blocker program won’t be here for a few months. Not good enough for those of us with a spam problem.

So finally I found this beta version comment spam blocker. It has a list of all the major spammers and immediately blocks their comments. It sounded great, but it requires a little linux knowledge and has to be uploaded to your own blogging site on your personal server. That doesn’t work with blogger. So it appears the only way to get rid of spam comments for now is to deny anonymous posts altogether. Bummer.

On a funnier note, researchers actually found a use for spam emails. Using certain algorithms researchers are using spam messages to tell a 3D water gun where to shoot water on a dissolvable block of foam. With frequent messages, the block becomes a sculpture. It’s nice to know there are bigger nerds out there than me.

Comments

Ren said…
And people criticize me for having too much time!
Robert said…
LB: Too much time? Me? Just trying to get more posts up. People didn't like it when I took long vacations from Nerdland. (But I do have more time waiting for Jess to pick me up after work...)
Sunny said…
Silly Robert.

I thought he was talking about the people with the sculptures and the spam emails?

On the other hand, you having more posts is freaking awesome. Keep it up!
Tracey said…
Don't ask me how I found your blog, cause I have no clue. But, I stopped allowing anonymous comments, and still got blog spam. Word verification is the only way to stop it...but it is a pain in the butt.

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