I thought I would give the non-registered users a heads up about our new Spam filter that is used if you are commenting here at CyberNet.
If you are submitting a comment you will now need to do some simple math before your comment can be posted. I have a spam filter (called Akismet) that catches almost every spam comment but there are two reasons I’ve added this new feature:
- Every now and then a spam comment will get through the filter, so this will help make sure that a human is the one posting the comment.
- The main reason, however, that I am doing this is because the spam filter stops comments from posting but it will still store them in the database until I delete them. I currently receive between 500 and 1,000 spam comments each day which adds a lot of extra load to the database, not to mention that I normally scroll through them all to make sure no real comments are getting filtered incorrectly. This new system will prevent the comment from being written to the database until they have entered the correct answer.
If you are worried about the math I made sure that you won’t see any numbers great than 10. That way you should still be able to figure out the answer using your fingers and toes… 
Registered users will not have to worry about this new feature so you can continue to comment as normal.
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Tags: General
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Nice idea to stop the spam, at least its not one of those Captchas, they are so annoying.
Spam Protection math….where can I get that so I can use it too? Thanks!
PS I sent a comment that orange text on blue is hard to read.
Lets hope your security implimentation doesn’t catch on around the web, because it seems it would be easy for someone to write some code to do a simple addition problem. That’s why those Captchas are annoying the way they are. They’re designed in a way that makes it impossible to just scan the page and enter a simple string, let alone a single character like 1-9.
Still, if nothing else, this may inspire some new users to register, which never hurts.
I am using this plug-in (with some basic modifications that I made to work the way I want it to).
The nice thing is that I can easily change the way the plug-in works so that it will start displaying words, like “eight plus four”, so that it is even harder to guess. I am amazed to see how little spam I am getting now.
Yeh, spam comments are a bitch. My site got bombed once every few minutes in the early hours of every day. I’ve now implemented a word verification system on a second page, meaning their robots would have to post once, then search a new site for the required word and then post that. My spam has dropped to zero, but I guess it’s a bit OTT for registered members. Still, it’s just a stopgap solution until I can make something better.
Using Akismet on my blog at WordPress and it does help keep the spam at bay.
Great idea!
Maybe you should make the problems a bit more complex; how about some variables or something, it could keep the site safe from people under-qualified to think.
Would the square root of 13 be good enough?
Hey,
take a look at my guide to protection from spam.