For the past two weeks the comments sections of the posts on this site have been bombarded with spam. Ostensibly (almost) legitimate comments inviting me or others to click on a link to the sender's site. Don't ask me where they go -I haven't looked for fear of being mugged or catching a nasty infection. Oddly they've been distributed randomly throughout the comments sections of all 600 odd posts I've made since 2004 (wow, doesn't time fly!?). Well I've deleted them all and added one of those wretched "Captcha" word recognition thingys that are supposed to defeat spam-bots. We'll see if it works. In the meantime apologies to all for the inconvenience -sadly I think this is just modern living.
3 comments:
I guess the captcha has been daunting enuf as I rarely get comment spam. The first time I did - years ago - I left it up because it suggested a person really had taken a moment to read before leaving their irrelevant link. I now doubt that was the case but whatever.
Hi Glenn, You are the first real person to comment in awhile so I guess the Captcha process wasn't too daunting. The spam was a remarkable thing. It came out of nowhere and I was getting up to a dozen 'comments' a day spread out across the entire site and the problem seemed to be getting worse. Since resuscitating this blog a few months ago I haven't paid much attention to the mechanics of commentary: I was relying on the Blogger system (ok but a bit prosaic) after the demise of the excellent Haloscan which worked very well prior to it acquisition by JS-Kit/Echo (who then dumped it in favor some social media venture). I really don't like Captcha as I often have trouble reading the words (have you tried the audio alternatives, BTW? -they really are horrible) but something had to be done and I was concerned the spam links were leading back to some malware. I suppose Disqus is a possibility but they have a reputation for publishing/selling the identity of users. So for now commentators will be tested for their ability to read tortuously twisted symbols...
Oh yeah, some of those captchas are impossible to read. I've had to refresh the page 3 or 4 times to get a legible one. Today's looks pretty easy. Let's see.
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