Spam, Spam Everywhere
on 07.26.06, 09:23pm in computers • comments (6)
When we returned from the hospital yesterday (our second son was born on Monday, weighing in at 8lbs, 1oz and everyone’s doing great), I opened my email to find 138 new spam messages.
While not a big deal, it’s still annoying. Here’s a question: does anyone know what the “report and delete” button in Hotmail actually does? Who does it report the email too? And why do I keep getting spam from the same places if I report them?
Also, I’ve noticed a ton of comment spam on the blog lately, and think it’s about time to do something about it. Without requiring people to register and having to take the time to moderate all the comments, using CAPTCHA seems to be the best option. Thoughts?
Beau Monday (July 26, 2006 @ 10:51 pm)
CAPTCHA on my blog cut my comment spam down from several a day before to maybe one every couple of months. Definitely worth the effort.
Grats on #2, by the way. Hope everyone is doing well.
Cale Bruckner (July 26, 2006 @ 11:13 pm)
Yes, congratulations on your 2nd child. I’m a father of two as well - hard to resist a 3rd.
I’m using MT 3.2 and have had similar problems with comment spam. In this post http://www.palmit.com/archives/techcommentary/comments_enable_1.html I describe a few things I did to combat it. I’d like to implement a CAPTCHA system as well but haven’t had the time.
Frankly, I’m surprised somebody hasn’t developed a turn-key replacement for MT and WP comment systems that deal with the SPAM problem for you. I just started using cocomment to track my comments throughout the blogosphere - maybe they’ll start offering the service at some point.
As far as e-mail SPAM goes - switch to gmail or Yahoo! mail - both services do a solid job of dealing with the SPAM problem.
vern (July 26, 2006 @ 11:22 pm)
I personally hate CAPTCHA. I think it’s more applicable as a nuisance for the genuine posters/commenters than a problem for the spammers.
I have always favored the lookup list style of spam blocking. I.E. MTBlacklist or ReverseDOS. Obviously MTBl.. is no longer available, but ReverseDOS is…
But that’s only me.
But I have to agree with Cale; Hotmail’s ability to catch spam is intolerably bad, especially compared to Gmail. I don’t and have never used Yahoo mail.
Of course, you can always setup your own mail box. But there are issues there, as well.
And a huge congrats on your son’s birth! I have two girls but I am hoping to convince my wife to try again and hope that we get a son…
AAwoken (July 27, 2006 @ 12:53 am)
I got rid of my comment SPAM problem quite easily. Wordpress and Akismet. Free, easy to install and very, very effective.
Carlos (July 27, 2006 @ 2:10 pm)
Congrats on your 2nd son!
There’s a huge problem with spam now, even on gmail or yahoo I’ve noticed that I use to have more and more junk email everyday. Detection is getting more difficult, as now they’re using images to send the text, and the only way to detect it seems to be if someone before you has reported it. Anyway, that said, Windows Live Mail still has a big problem with that, and isn’t at the same level as gmail, hope this improves with next updates.
Brandon (July 31, 2006 @ 7:53 am)
Congrats on your 2nd. My first is due to arrive in December.
I don’t mind captchas as long as they’re not very hard. I’d rather see a decent captcha that helps you keep the spam to a minimum than one that is near-impossible to read that keeps out 100% spam (and 100% comments).