Since writing Spam Attack and being surprised by the results (zero spam in over 2 weeks!); Though I did not feel that it was an accurate test. The site was not optimised for spamming!
So a new experiment needs to be done;
The Setup
On this blog I have setup the htaccess tricks (as described in A few tricks up my sleeves – htaccess style and htaccess reviewed augmented with a few snippets from the 3G blacklist).
This along with ‘Bad Behaviour’ should take care of all the bots that will plague me.
The Bait
People (if you can call spammers that :p) wanted a reward (loads of links and PR) and not just from any site (though any site will do) they want it from ‘relevant sites’ if possible.
So I have set up the ‘Bait Page’ This holds some choice words from spammy comments I have gotten before. As well all keywords from Highest Paying Adsense Keywords
Why all of these ‘keywords’ you ask? Read Stu’s guide on how spammers find you (Stu if you showup here get email subscriptions sorted on your site! -ed).
The Page will become ‘live’ about an hour after this post; and I will update next week the results! What do YOU think will happen?
Popularity: 50% [?]
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It’ll be interesting to hear what kind of spam messages get sent your way for those types of high paying keywords.
I wonder if any messages will slip through…
Indeed it will be interesting; since yesterday; there have been about 100 spammy messages coming to this post :p and from then none have gotten through…so we can hope !!!
Hmm. Great too see a contest between you and spammers. I am eager to see the results. What kind spam messages will be sent.
Interesting, looking for spammers to spam your blog. That’s okay, you can have mine, although I seem to be lucky that Askimet is catching almost every single thing these days.
Akismet and comment timeout normally does the trick. Spammers usually try and message older posts. Anyway, it is a nice contest that you have set up. Can’t wait for next week.
I may actually extend the period to two weeks; The results though ARE intriguing :p
I’m like Mitch, 99.9% of spam gets caught by Akismet, including some comments that weren’t spam, so I am really quite pleased with the results. Nevertheless I will be quite interested to see the results from this little experiment of yours.
Askimet indeed is brilliant and it catches a lot of spam, however this experiment is more focussing on stopping them before they even have a chance to leave a spammy comment :p
Cool, so once you work out how to stop them, the next step is to develop a plugin for the rest of us to use.
I think the contest between the blogger and the spammer is not the right place the first should concentrate on.The contents ,the design,the development.The idea of fighting is a wrong one.
Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – taking you feeds also, Thanks.
Hi nice post, i read your blog from time to time but i was wondering something. I also run a blog on a similar topic, but i get 1,000′s of spam comments and emails every day does that happen to you.. Any ideas to stop it? I currently have commenting disabled but i want to turn it back on.. Thanks!
Hey Agustin, Had a quick look at your site doesn’t seem to be any content :p liked the theme though.
In regards to the spam you are getting I suggest you check out Spam Attack the setup in that has been working very well for me. I get only a few a week now.
It’s a real shame that you can’t trap these buggers on your blog and not let them out…. I get hundreds of spam messages a week across my blog network.
Hey Forest; Firstly congratz on your latest acquisition and thanks for dropping by!
Yes it is a shame but I recently brought a few spamming tools to see how they work and I found a simple ‘fix’ can eliminate a lot of spam. Just working on it a bit more and will release a post.
Thank you for your help!