December 21, 2004
The best spam prevention technique is the one you don't blog about
Assuming I had discovered a somewhat effective comment spam prevention technique, I am not entirely sure why it would be a good idea write about it in public. Granted, sharing your newfound approach is a noble act but it will also be rendered useless by the time it reaches the mildest degree of popularity.
Comment spam is a fight the weblog community is not ever going to win. It's funny how we laugh at the industry's quaint attempts to devise of a copy protection mechanism that outlasts the next weekend and at the same time expect to solve comment spam in the same fashion. You cannot have low-barrier access and be in full control, too. Evading comment spam is all about making spammers find an easier target.
Comments
>> Evading comment spam is all about making spammers find an easier target. <<
That is very true. People started switching from MT to other packages for exactly that reason.
I actually only blog about those anti-spam measures that affect the user. In this case, referrer blocking.
Posted by Volker Weber (#)
I understand. It makes sense that way.
Posted by
Henning ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.netalive.org/swsu/nav-commenters.gif)
(#)
Using the same failing approaches as email spam filtering needs to rely on due to the limitations of that medium won't ever work. However, water tight comment spam filtering is easily feasible if you just tale advantage of the differences in the medium: namely that it is synchronous, so that challenge-response actually works.
I wrote about this a while ago: http://plasmasturm.org/log/40/
