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September 23, 2004
Fighting Comment Spam
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
The war on Comment Spam can be won.
I mention the subject because this blog was inundated last night with comment spam. All of it came from the same IP address -- 69.50.175.146. I wish the solution we were using would simply block comments from being placed once an IP address is on a blacklist, but it take out the trash so I should not complain.
But there are other solutions that can work as well, solutions that don't exist to fight e-mail spam:
- Captcha-- Anyone who wants to place a comment has to enter a randomly-generated key posted on the page where the comment is being written. It's the same trick being used by registrars to stop the harvesting of e-mail addresses from their databases.
- Registration -- This is the trick I recommend here. Requiring registration builds a registration database, which can be used to generate feedback on new products and to justify ad rates. This favors large blog sites like Corante, since a single sign-in can be shared among many blogs.
- Double opt-in -- This will prevent people from giving phony registrations, then sharing them with their friends. People register as their e-mail address, you send that address a confirmation e-mail, and that e-mail must then be returned in order for the registration to process.
I have seen blogs that use each of these techniques in the last few months, and the people who run them say they work well. Sure it's a bit of a hassle, and if you like anonymity some will chafe.
But you can also have a valid blog without comments at all. So I prefer this.
Comments (3)
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Brad Hutchings on September 23, 2004 08:37 PM writes...
Wow, work with me on a DRM analogy for a moment. Registration and double-registration that you describe above are like DRM for access to be able to use the content that is this discussion in its full glory. You can only participate if you go through the DRM scheme. And this is "a good" (in economic terms) because it excludes a bad (comment spam).
So, in 20,000 words or less, why is this philosophically any different from using DRM on music to urge people to pay for it so that music production and distribution and filtering and all that other industrial activity are economically viable enough for it to happen? :-)
Permalink to Comment2. Adriana on September 26, 2004 06:12 AM writes...
Hmm, what Brad said. On my blogs I use Captcha and I IP ban as much as I can. We found a way to manage comments on the busiest one(about 350 a week and rising) not only in terms of spam but also trolls.
We have considered registration but are resisting it exactly for the reasons Brad mentions his comment. We want to encourage people to comment and engage in a dynamic exchange and registration would disturb that dynamic. That said, if things get really, really bad, we will have to consider again...
Permalink to Comment3. uk lingerie on October 11, 2004 12:37 PM writes...
Hi, i just set up my first lingrie store! If you want to come see, then please do! - i like your site by the way, but i dont entirely get what you mean? Can you explain?
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