Sunday, June 24, 2012

Word Verification -- Annoyance or Savior

In the past week or more, Blogger's spam protection measures have detected several spam comments.  These start out with a generic praise, written by "Anonymous" users, and always conclude with a link to a non-doll related web site.   The most recent one, received today (minus the web site link) is shown below:


I really love your site.. Excellent colors & theme. Did
you build this amazing site yourself? Please reply back as I’m looking to create my own personal blog
and would like to learn where you got this from or what the theme is called.
Kudos!


Really?  I mean... really?  Am I supposed to fall for this?


Short of moderating all comments before they are published, word verification, which had been turned off, is now back on and my blogs no longer accept Anonymous comments.   Comments to post older than 14 days have always been and remain moderated. 

Valid comments regarding posts I publish are very important and encouraging.  So sad it has to come to this, and I hesitate to ban valid "Anonymous" commenters, but future comments on this blog will only be accepted from registered users.

dbg

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4 comments:

  1. Was your word verification ever off? I check your blog almost every day and comment quite a bit. I've never had a case where your verification was off. You said spam detection caught these messages. So does this mean they only made it to your spam folder? So far I have gotten more spam with my detection on than off. And that has been very minimal. I turned off my Anonymous because I was getting too many messages from the same anonymous person. That person just turned around and registered. LOL! So my anonymous is back on. If it goes only to my spam folder, I don't really care. That means blogger is doing it's job. If you do ultimately go to moderating each comment, can you PLEASE take off the word verification. Both is overkill for us lowly commenters out here. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Vanessa,

      Yes, I did turn the word verification off last week. Maybe you just didn't notice.

      These Anonymous/spam comments have been going to the Blogger Spam folder and I am notified of them by email. I then have to go the dashboard to delete.

      Even though they are being detected by Blogger before they are posted, they annoy me. I'd rather deter the annonymous culprits by turning word verification on and allowing comments only from registered users than having to delete the comments.

      Total comment moderation might make it easy to weed out spam from true comments, but it would also create an extra step for me that I do not desire. Therefore, I have no immediate or future plans to resort to moderating all comments.


      dbg

      Delete
  2. DBG, I have received those irritating comments. Not too often, but every now and then. They remind me of roaches. I want to go RAID on them. Squash. No, I do not want to promote mail order brides. Splat! If the product or item link has nothing to do in any way with dolls and/or action figures, I delete it. Spammers are not going to pollute MY blog with their crap. And I do NOT appreciate fake compliments. Insult to my intelligence.

    Breathing in and out of a paper bag ;-D

    ReplyDelete

Your comments are appreciated. To eliminate spam, all comments are being moderated and will be published upon approval. Thank you!