I found the same thing; the spammers hit way before the legitimate traffic picked up. I’ve got some pre-filters on at this point so that I don’t even see most of the spam.

Comment by Dr. Pete
on 04/02/07 at 08:56 PM
 

Sounds like what you have is working, as I have never noticed any spam comments. 

Have you at all considered “capcha”?  I have that capability with ExpressionEngine, but as it is not the most usable for many people, I decided to just activate monitoring.

mp/m

Comment by Mike Maddaloni
on 04/03/07 at 09:23 AM
 

I feel the same way about capchas; they can be effective but are a poor solution from a usability standpoint. What I have in place now is actually pretty simple: it’s just a threshold on the number of links allowed. The spam posts are riddled with links, and since I put it in place, I only get about one sneak through every couple of weeks. I also monitored it for a month and got only one false alarm, for which I bumped up the link count. I tried a bunch of other, fancier concepts, but they were only effective against bots, and most of my spammers seem to be people.

Comment by Dr. Pete
on 04/03/07 at 09:28 AM
 

I am having a hacking issue with most of my php/mysql apps with people spamming the comments fields [gallery, phpbb]. I had to limit all anonymous access and now have to contend with people registering user accounts with capchas and email confirmation 3-5 a day. All this overhead is effecting how I can use these systems. I can look on the positive side, I have alot more users. Any ideas on stopping the chaos?

Comment by G. Pearson
on 04/24/07 at 01:06 AM
 

Anything you do, similar to what Dr. Pete did, is a technical solution that you will have to continually review, and of course there will be the occasional messages that get through or lost.

As a result, I am leaving moderation turned on, and will be adding text to that effect on The Hot Iron so people don’t think their comments were not posted.

mp/m

Comment by Mike Maddaloni
on 04/24/07 at 07:42 AM