Re: Comment spammers chewing blogger bandwidth like crazy

[Simon Waters <simonw () zynet net>]

On Tuesday 16 January 2007 03:06, Jason Frisvold wrote:
> The argument there is that those users don't deserve to comment if
> they can't keep their computers clean, but let's get real..  Some of
> this stuff is getting pretty advanced and it's getting tougher for
> general users to keep their computers clean.

I'd have said it was getting easier to keep computers clean. Back in the late 
1980's I use to have my own DOS boot disk, with bootsector antivirus tools, 
so that any PC I used on my University I could be sure was clean. Doesn't 
mean there aren't more computers, with less clueful users, these days.

> I think a far better system is something along the lines of a SURBL
> with word filtering.  I believe that Akismet does something along
> these lines.

This is the same issue as the email spam issue. Identify by source, or 
content. Just as content filters are error prone with email spam, they will 
be error prone with other types of content.

I think either approach is viable, as long as the poster has an immediate 
method of redress. ("My IP is clean" works, and scales, "this URL is safe" 
works but doesn't scale, "this post" is safe is viable). In each case you 
need to make sure the redress is protected from abuse, so some sort of 
CAPTCHA is inevitable.

> > There is such a black listing service already, but again, reliability is
> > an issue.
>
> Reliability is always an issue with blacklists as they are run as
> independent entities.  There is always someone who has a problem with
> how an individual blacklist is run...

That is easily solved with one's feet. Not as if there is a shortage of 
blacklists for various purposes.