Sunday 7 April 2013

I never thought I'd do this.....

.... but I've enabled Word verification for comments. Over the last week or so I've had an exponential surge of spam, much of it getting through Blogger's spam filter. I've deleted over 300 comments today, most of them about toilets. I'm wasting time that I could have spent on content, on removing spam instead, so until Blogger sorts its spam filters out, I'm afraid it has to be word verification. However some time ago I published some tips for making Captchas easier to get right  which may well help you not just here but in lots of other places where you need to complete one.

I hope this doesn't put you off commenting - I love to read your comments, as long as they are not about toilets, s*x cams, business opportunities, or any of the scores of other irrelevant topics that the spammers seem keen to discuss.

Mind you, some of them do make me laugh. One of them persistently tried to post crochet patterns for obscene objects. I'm going to rather miss that one!

5 comments :

  1. I know that you are very crafy, so I look forward to reading one of your craft blogs about your latest crocheting project!

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    Replies
    1. I'm dusting off my crochet hooks as I type....

      Delete
  2. oops, that, should read "crafty"

    (actually I just wanted to post again to prove that, with your advice, I had finally got to grips with captchas!)

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  3. Shame you didn't have a picture ready made. It would have made a good caption competition for the 60 shades LCC meeting!
    Jane Brown

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  4. I have noticed that disabling anoymous comments pretty much dried up the spam river! Seems that bots don't have email addresses!

    I share your loathing for CAPTCHA, they really are a blight on the blogging world. I find them so difficult to read (unless i hit refresh about 20 times...) that I started using CAPTCHA bypass software to get around the blighters.

    The software I use is called rumola (skipinput.com) and I would really recommend it to serious bloggers! Its cheap, reliable and definitely makes the internet less frustrating! Hope some of this info has been of help :)

    ReplyDelete

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