Scott On Writing.NET

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I've Noticed My CAPTCHAs Effectiveness is Decreasing
20 February 07 05:05 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

About six months ago I implemented CAPTCHAs here on ScottOnWriting.NET and immediately saw comment spams drop from dozens a day to virtually zero. Sure, I occassionally found a comment spam or two every week, but the tide of spams had been abated. That...

Filed under: Comment Spam

Giving a CAPTCHA a Whirl
06 July 06 05:17 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Comment spam is evil. I've been getting on the tune of 25-50 comment spams per day the past several weeks. My custom utility to quickly delete comments in .Text has helped delete comment spams after the fact; additionally, SQL triggers have, to date,...

Filed under: Blog Enhancements, Comment Spam

Quickly Deleting Comments in .Text
28 March 06 12:27 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

While I'm certain that Community Server has the ability to easily delete comments en mass, this blog still uses Scott Watermasysk 's close to originally-released version of .Text (gasp!). I've been meaning to upgrade, I promise, but with the assorted...

Filed under: Blog Enhancements, Comment Spam

And the Point of this Comment Spam Would Be?
03 September 05 04:00 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

As I've blogged about before , ScottOnWriting.NET received its fair share of comment spams, 99% of which are stopped through pattern matching and URL counts. The vast, vast majority of comment spams I receive have some purpose: they advertise a website...

Filed under: Comment Spam

Comment Spam - Scripts or Brute Force?
14 April 05 11:49 AM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

I've always assumed that comment spammers are using scripts to spread their evil, evil comment spam. My assumption is based on the following: Brute force comment spamming - actually visiting the site and entering a comment in by hand - is slow and inefficient...

Filed under: Comment Spam

An Example of the Evilness of Comment Spam
17 February 05 02:32 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Here's just one example how comment spam is making the blogging world a crappier place ( warning : clicking on the following link may cause your browser to jack your computer's CPU to 100% for several seconds ): http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/jonne%20kats...

Filed under: Comment Spam

The Worth(lessness) of CAPTCHAs
02 February 05 09:27 AM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

In a previous entry on stopping comment spam , I discussed a gaggle of techniques that can be used to fight the scourge of comment spam. The list offerred five techniques: Moderation Use of a CAPTCHA Banning certain substrings from the comments Munging...

Filed under: Comment Spam

Stopping Comment Spam in .Text Using Triggers
24 January 05 11:22 AM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

With Google's recent rel=”nofollow” initiative designed to reduce blog comment spam, I've been reading up more on comment spam, techniques to fight it, and so on. One great resource is the Comment Spam blog , which contains a blacklist of comment spammer...

Filed under: Miscellaneous, Comment Spam

The End of Comment Spam?
19 January 05 09:24 AM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

What is Comment Spam? Comment spam is an evil and real problem for blogs. The premise of it goes as follows: evil, vile spammers post use old blog entries to post comments that are littered with links to their porn/gambling/diploma/pharmaceutical sites...

Filed under: Miscellaneous, Comment Spam

Improving the Blog Commenting Experience
13 August 03 06:04 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

I started reading blogs regularly at http://weblogs.asp.net a few months ago and got hooked - I enjoy reading ideas, thoughts, advice, and rants from fellow ASP.NET developers and am subscribed to many RSS feeds. From my understanding, the main motivation...

Filed under: Miscellaneous, Comment Spam