Comments on: A New Form of Spam http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/ For businesses that use the internet Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:23:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Mike Wisian http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-14 Mike Wisian Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:15:10 +0000 http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/#comment-14 Thanks for the ReCAPTCHA idea, Steve and Jonathan. I tried other forms of audio CAPTCHA, but hosting them seems to tax the server. Thanks for the ReCAPTCHA idea, Steve and Jonathan. I tried other forms of audio CAPTCHA, but hosting them seems to tax the server.

]]> By: Marshall Durrett http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-13 Marshall Durrett Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:30:27 +0000 http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/#comment-13 We haven't had any problems yet, but this is very good information to know just in case... We haven’t had any problems yet, but this is very good information to know just in case…

]]> By: Steve Stedman http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-12 Steve Stedman Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:07:47 +0000 http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/#comment-12 After some experimentation with 'referer' validation, limiting links, blacklisting, etc., we settled into blocking blog comment spam with Akismet, <a href="http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/" rel="nofollow">Bad Behavior</a>, and <a href="http://recaptcha.net/" rel="nofollow">ReCAPTCHA</a>. For the price (free), ReCAPTCHA is probably the best CAPTCHA out there. You get to filter out the bots and Carnegie Mellon gets their books digitized---after you read about the concept, you wonder why no one thought of it before. The client interface is pretty darn smart as well. It addresses the accessibility issue by providing an audio challenge. For the back end, there are plenty of <a href="http://recaptcha.net/resources.html" rel="nofollow">plugins and libraries</a> to suit almost any environment. It was a dirt-simple plugin install on WordPress (<a>example</a>) and almost as easy to add to a PHP mailform. Oh, and one other thing. If you want to display your email address on a page, you can wrap it in a reCAPTCHA as well (clicking on the ellipses in an <a href="http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/" rel="nofollow">email link brings up the ReCAPTCHA challenge</a>). After some experimentation with ‘referer’ validation, limiting links, blacklisting, etc., we settled into blocking blog comment spam with Akismet, Bad Behavior, and ReCAPTCHA.

For the price (free), ReCAPTCHA is probably the best CAPTCHA out there. You get to filter out the bots and Carnegie Mellon gets their books digitized—after you read about the concept, you wonder why no one thought of it before. The client interface is pretty darn smart as well. It addresses the accessibility issue by providing an audio challenge.

For the back end, there are plenty of plugins and libraries to suit almost any environment. It was a dirt-simple plugin install on WordPress (example) and almost as easy to add to a PHP mailform.

Oh, and one other thing. If you want to display your email address on a page, you can wrap it in a reCAPTCHA as well (clicking on the ellipses in an email link brings up the ReCAPTCHA challenge).

]]> By: Jonathan Horak http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-11 Jonathan Horak Thu, 20 Sep 2007 19:10:21 +0000 http://www.thestylesheet.com/featured-articles/2007/09/a-new-form-of-spam/#comment-11 An accessible CAPTCHA solution called <a href="http://recaptcha.net/" rel="nofollow">reCAPTCHA</a> is a new option. This particular CAPTCHA implementation uses our ability to decipher distorted text to digitize books, as humans can usually read text which <acronym title="Optical Character Recognition">OCR</acronym> programs cannot. An accessible CAPTCHA solution called reCAPTCHA is a new option. This particular CAPTCHA implementation uses our ability to decipher distorted text to digitize books, as humans can usually read text which OCR programs cannot.

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