Comment SPAM
If you’ve used email at all within the past 2 months or more, you know pretty well what SPAM is. It’s an annoying thing but with all types of email filters out there - we don’t get nearly as many as we could.
For the past 2 years spammers have begun to not just spam email but other devices. Pretty much anything they can get there web address and message on. Message Boards and Mailing lists were the beginning and slowly things began to move toward personal blogs (like mine).
The idea is simple, you post a comment on someone’s website and put your link into the field that says “URL”. Your post will appear on this person’s website and more than likely stay there for search engines find and index. Once that begins, they get better search results because people are linking to their website(s).
The thing that most spammers didn’t take into account was the high level of geeky bloggers out there and how personal we take the issue of SPAM.
Now it’s personal
This weekend I began to notice a small trickle of SPAM coming in from the comments on my site. It was only a few so I quickly deleted them as soon as they happened. They weren’t on my site for most the 60 seconds.
I kept deleting them every few minutes and after about an hour, I began to notice them coming faster and faster. At that same time, Jodi had asked me to go with her to pick up groceries. I wanted to address the issue before it got bad but thought I would deal with it as soon as I got home; in about an hour.
When I got home I looked at how many comments I had received and it was well over 400 while I was gone. I began watching the process and noticed they were coming in batches of 25. Every 2 minutes I would get another batch.
Finding a Solution
At this point I started getting really pissed at what was happening and began to do some quick research - starting with Google, of course.
It just so happens I read quite a bit of technology websites and already knew of a system out there that did the job (or so I heard).
Let me introduce MT Blacklist. MT Blacklist is a Movable Type plug-in to eradicate comment and trackback spam that is actively being developed by Jay Allen. Not only is this system/plug-in extremely easy to use, it took about 2 minutes to install, 20 seconds to find all the comment spam and about 5 more minutes to rebuild of my pages after deleting each spam.
I won’t get into how this all works but it’s based off a public blacklist (a list of known Spammers). I’ve begun my own blacklist that is located in my root directory but right now it’s pretty much the same as the master file. If I notice anything different, I will add it and publish it right away. So feel free to subscribe to my blacklist if you find it helpful.
After I installed the MT Blacklist plug-in I haven’t noticed anymore spam. I’m hoping it will stay that way but in the mean time, I’ll be researching new methods to add protection to my website. I’ll try to give updates on what I find.
Update
Just a quick note that I am still using MT 2.661 and have not jumped to the 3.x version of MT. If you’re using the new MT, you’ll notice a lot of extra features that will make your life a lot easier. Enough to make me want to upgrade (when I find the time).
If you’re interested in what MT Blacklist looks like for MT 3.x, I would suggest taking a peek at some of the screenshots and the quick article at Neil’s world
cooper Says:
When you say that the new version of MT makes your life easier, are you saying it is already equipped with some sort of Spam bocker? Or should I still go for the plugin?