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I've been living in fear since yesterday when I saw a post on jeansnow.net saying

It started the other day with 2 new comments that appeared in really old posts, and linked to porn sites .... I deleted the comments, only to have them reappear the next day at the exact same places. Today there was a whopping dozen or more,

I also received two little porn-related comments Friday, and was not looking forward to dozens more.

So, I began work on comment-cop, my little anti-comment-spam plugin (which also required a little editing of the main MT code). It displays an image with a secret key that must be entered when you post a comment. I'm assuming that the spammers aren't spamming by hand, so this should stop any robot spamming.

Please leave a comment on this post to try it out. I guess some people will be interested in having this for themselves also, so once I have racked up a few comments, and see that it works correctly, I'll post the plug-in and instructions about where to edit your Moveable Type source-code.

UPDATE:
I just did a quick google to find stuff about anti-blog-spamming, and Joi-ito's site popped up. There are a couple people who mention the image verification there as well. Boris points out that it is not good for screen readers and text-only browsing. Didn't think of that. Dang.

But then does it really need to be an image? Just in case, if anyone happens to be reading this with a text only browser or screen-reader, and has the urge to start commenting after a year of silence, let me know. I'm sure there is no need to have it an image. The reason MT is so spamable is that all MT bogs are the same behind the scenes. It makes it too easy to make one script that can automate spam to all/any MT blogs. Throw in a little variation, and it's no longer worth the spammer's time to figure out how to spam most blogs unless your getting mega-hits.

Thinking about that makes me wish I didn't waste my whole day working on this when adding a simple, random, hidden value to my form would probably stop any spammer unless they are directly targeting my blog.

test comment

Okay, it looks like your anti-spam code works... I'm definitely interested in seeing it work, having just had my site spammed repeatedly . Have you seen any other ways of dealing with spam? I've seen the "disemvoweling method" but I don't want to leave that stuff on the site, vowels or not. Anyway, thanks for the hard work!

Nice code fix. But I still don't really like these types of solutions. You can build up walls to keep spammers out, but that doesn't stop spammers. Even at best, they just move on to the next house down the block. In the end, do you really want to live in a house with technological walls built up all around you? Is that what we all started blogging about in the first place?

I did hear an interesting solution that I think works well.

Nuke all spemmers and shoot anything that glows. :)

btw. If you are going to Ebisu this Wed I'll buy you a drink as part of the "buy your unemployed moblog host a drink" week. I encourage any other Tokyo mobblogger to do the same.

I came across a new plugin earlier today called MT-Blacklist (http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/) that kills comment spam based on (surprise) blacklists of URLs/text strings etc. These can be automatically shared online, so I suppose the more people use it the more effective it will get. I prefer Kevin's solution, though--don't suppose it could be worked up into a plugin so that cowards like me don't have to mess with the source code?

By the way, as a Tokyo moblogger who thus far hasn't got around to expressing any appreciation for Mfop: what's the deal for Wednesday in Ebisu, and can anyone turn up?

Marc,

I haven't gotten any spam today and other people are able to comment.. so I guess it works.

Didn't have a chance to post it tonight. I'll have to turn my monitor toward the wall tomorrow at work so no one can see and post it then.

I think I should change it though to make the "code" less difficult to enter. I'm pretty sure a simple three digit code would keep spam away, but is easier for people to input.

I was also thinking of something to solve the accesability issues. If the "code" is the answer to a simple, random question, the question can be plain text, thus viewable by a screen reader, yet would still stop the spam.

Kakyou,
I'm interested in your suggestion about what we should do until the spammers are nuked. :-)

Gareth,
Anyone can show up, and I will as well. I'll assume you know the location, because I don't know where it is off hand. I hope it's still being held where the meetup site says it is...

Ok Kevin, here's part of my penance for providing such a useless opinion before :p

I was digging through my stats today and found something interesting. I'm getting quite a number of hits from searches for "remember pers0nal inf0". I reason this means people are googling specifically for blog comment pages. I guess I should change that line away from the MT default.

kevin - don't suppose you can give me the code for your anti-spam thing. I don't want to use a blacklist.

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