ONCE A FORTNIGHT, I look back at what the process I used to write blog posts and to keep my little patch of the internet free of comment spams.
When I first carved out a space on Typepad, I would face up to nearly 300 spams every morning. By early 2007, Six Apart established tight queue filters. Looking back on past write-ups about fighting comment spam, I wonder if I could remember how to use a manual clean-up routine. The spam I get today is normally prefaced by a referrer string shown in the accompanying screenshot. People are paid to look for parts of a blog's set-up and then they target that blog. In my case, if you find reference to the phrase "Typekey or Typepad account" you can normally assume your comment will post to my blog without any complication. So I'm stuck with cleaning comment spam nowadays that people in small outsourced jobs are doing as little nixers. That's okay with me.
Previously: "Comment Spam Round 17" on September 29, 2010.
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