Tackling Comment Spam–For Good

Written on April 2, 2008 by Holly · Filed under Business & Money

Blogs are everywhere today; just about everyone has one and because so many people of various backgrounds, cultures and personal interests are involved with the caring and keeping of personal or entertainment websites, they have easily become the leading form of web media when it comes to attracting spam.

Web publishers need to constantly be on top of their comments, checking for spam and getting rid of it promptly before viewers see them and suddenly think we condone the buying and selling of illegal pharmaceuticals or we are unnaturally concerned about their personal and intimate relationships. Spam comments are equally bad for everyone involved in a particular website. They are irritating for the webmaster, having to check sometimes daily or even multiple times a day for comments that are inappropriate for the website and are offensive to readers and it also shows readers that a website may not be as professional as it would like to be seen. If a website fails to look the part of a multi-faceted, entertaining and above all, polished and mastered website, it does not matter how well your website does stat-wise, your viewers will not be interested and potential-advertisers will not take you seriously.

Dealing with spam comments can quickly become a second job for a webmaster, especially since the bigger a website gets, the more spam it attracts. The secret is to finding an efficient and user-friendly spam comment program to help eliminate the worry of unprofessional and inappropriate spam. If you are running Wordpress, you are most likely still running the spam monitoring system Akismet that came with your original Wordpress install; however, there are other programs out there, for Wordpress in particular, that I have found to work much better than Akismet.

spam Defensio is a comment spam monitor and eliminator whose entire mission is based off of outsmarting evil spam, which it does miraculously. In my opinion, you cannot get any better than Defensio for taking the edge off when you’re thinking about how your website is doing and if any spam is leaking through.

With its innovative technology, Defensio actually adapts to the content you post and is proven not to work in the exact same manner for two different bloggers; instead, it adapts to the webmaster’s specific way of managing their comments and follow suite. Every comment that is posted on your website is given a level of “spamminess” and is determined whether or not the level it is given is low enough to be posted. On a personal level, I have seen comments with a spamminess level as low as 20% be held for moderation, just to make sure that it wasn’t someone trying to plug their site or a company looking for some shameless exposure.

With 99.77% accuracy, Defensio definitely gives you the security you need to be a successful, professional and efficient webmaster with absolutely no worry about back doors being left open for spam comments to get away with accessing your content. It tackles comment spam for several different user interfaces such as Wordpress, PixelPost, Mephisto, Text Pattern, Movable Type and Drupal. It is also supported by several different web developer platforms such as Ruby on Rails, Java, Perl, PHP (4 and 5) and Python; all of which can be downloaded here.

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23 Responses »

  1. Carl Mercier on April 2nd, 2008 at 9:08 am

    Holly, that was an -awesome- review! You really understand what we do, how Defensio works and why it’s better.

    Your post should keep the team motivated for a few weeks! Thanks!

    Carl Mercier’s last blog post..Wordpress 2.5 is out, and we’re ready!

  2. Jenny on April 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    I don’t use it. I like my Akismet which works just as well.

    Jenny’s last blog post..Random Thought of the Day

  3. Sheena on April 3rd, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    Defensio is my pimp! Akismet used to eat up my REAL comments so I had to stop using it. I get so many spam comments in my quarantine but at least they aren’t out in the open annoying the public!

    Sheena’s last blog post..Masculine Or Feminine Test

  4. Teresa Morrow on April 3rd, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    Holly,

    I appreciate your post. I am currently using Akismet but have had issues in the past with it. So it is nice to have another alternative that will work in a different (and most likely) better way than Akismet.
    Thank you for your thorough analysis of the program.

    I love to blog however, trying to control the spam can deter my enthusiasm sometimes.

    Sincerely,

    Teresa Morrow
    Key Business Partners
    Virtual Assistance & Online Promotion
    for Coaches, Speakers and Writers

    Teresa Morrow’s last blog post..Networking–Time to Connect

  5. Guy M'Naghten on April 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    I’m going to have to try this out. It seems that I can’t get it perfect with Askimet. Either its letting too many spam comments in or its keeping too many real comments out. I tend to err on the side of inclusion because I really think comments are the backbone of blogging. But like you pointed out a lot of the spam keywords are pretty graphic or intimate, so I can’t really leave them up. Suffice it to say hand deleting comments is becoming too tiring for me.

    Guy M’Naghten’s last blog post..Worlds Best Binoculars — Which Pair is Right for You?

  6. James on April 4th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    I am still using Askimet to tackle spam. So far so good… guess I have to wait for my blog to get bigger for me to really start worrying about spam.

    James’s last blog post..Using video based content instead of text based content

  7. Naomi Dunford on April 4th, 2008 at 9:49 pm

    That was awesome to read! I’m running Akismet and I have had so many emails from people telling me my blog is eating their comments. The first few times I thought they were full of crap, but I finally checked Akismet — didn’t really cross my mind before — and there were a boatload.

    I’m going to look into that immediately. Thanks for letting us know!

  8. Ami on April 5th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    Spam is such a problem and you are right, getting rid of spam can very quickly eat up your time

    Problem is some comments do add value to our blogs and in the world of web 2.0 interactive is the name of the game

    Never heard of defensio but will definitely look it up

    Ami’s last blog post..How Affiliate Marketing Works by Rosalind Gardner

  9. NSpeaks on April 6th, 2008 at 2:25 am

    I am using Defensio since December 2007 and see my post why I didn’t like Defensio at all: http://nspeaks.com/205/defensio-is-tiring-me/

    NSpeaks’s last blog post..Defensio is tiring me

  10. Supreme Solutions on April 6th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

    Still using Askimet, I think the problem is their is a market for this type of spam. I was trolling on one forum and there was a guy chraging $ .25 a comment on relevant blogs, and he said that he could post a max of 400 posts a day per URL.

  11. Sebastien on April 7th, 2008 at 4:31 am

    I’ve been using Akismet and honestly, that’s all I need. I probably get 1 or 2 spam unfilteres spam comments a month. I guess I don’t have the same amount of traffic as you get though.

  12. Carl Mercier on April 7th, 2008 at 7:35 am

    Sebastien: In my opinion, how good a spam filter is should not be measured by the number of spam it lets through, but rather by a combination of false positives and false negatives. How many good comments is your current spam filter eating?

    If you’re like I was before, you probably don’t know and don’t even bother looking. It’s too much of a chore. Defensio gives you an easy to navigate quarantine which makes it a breeze to find false positives.

    When I switched to Defensio, I realized that I was missing a lot of good comments. They were buried in pages and pages of spam (ie: needle in a haystack). Now, the very rare FP just bubbles up to the top, making it extremely easy to identify.

    Needless to say, we’d be thrilled if you gave us a shot ;-)
    Carl Mercier’s last blog post..Not sure if Defensio is right for you?

  13. Motivational Posters on April 7th, 2008 at 8:25 am

    I have been a beta tester for Defensio. When there is a lot of spam, Defensio is extremely powerful (much powerful than Akismet). I applied for Defensio when the number of spam comments on my blog shot up suddenly. But it decreased with the same speed it rose and now there in no more spam trouble. But now Defensio is catching some of legit comments too (my blog is not a heavily commented blog). Overall, I am much more satisfied with Defensio than Akismet.

  14. Andk on April 7th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    Well, one major way to reduce spam is simply to turn off allow follow… since that is what a lot of marketers are attracted to when they go out to annoyingly promote their products.

    Andk’s last blog post..Eight Tips for Negotiating an Office Lease Renewal

  15. Carl Mercier on April 7th, 2008 at 6:01 pm

    Andk: if only it was that easy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work…

    Carl Mercier’s last blog post..Not sure if Defensio is right for you?

  16. Forex Profiting on April 13th, 2008 at 8:53 am

    Defensio sounds useful but I am wary of these email-spam-stoppers. More often than not they make mistakes and mark genuine emails as spam and can cause you to miss important emails.

  17. RT Cunningham on April 20th, 2008 at 10:46 am

    Hi Holly,

    Over here as well to check out your “dofollow” status. Hey, I just checked out the website for Defensio. I have very low spam right now due to 2 plugins, but if it picks up, I may have to switch to this.

    RT Cunninghams last blog post..Comment King/Queen Award For The Week Ending On April 19, 2008

  18. Seo Services on May 5th, 2008 at 2:05 am

    Hi Supreme Solutions,
    You have mentioned that one could post a max of 400 posts a day per URL. Is it really?
    But, I think that he might not checked do follow link. Otherwise, he couldn’t post 400 comments per day.

  19. Cheap Binoculars on May 16th, 2008 at 12:36 am

    I am new to wordpress but I use askimet and it seems to work pretty good. Defensio looks promising and I might give it a try soon.

  20. Trilastin-SR on May 31st, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    First time visitor here and I want to say I love the new theme. It doesn’t look like a “blog” at all. With respect to comment spam, do you feel that you are more of a target given that you have the dofollow and commentluv plugins enabled?

    Thx,

    Tri

    Trilastin-SRs last blog post..Dremu - Emu Oil Skin Care Products

  21. Holly on June 1st, 2008 at 9:25 am

    Tri: I definitely am more of a target firstly just because I have dofollow enabled and because of that, I really need a top notch spam filter and sadly, Akismet does not cut it, especially if you run a blog that is even semi-successful. As I’ve said before, the more popular a website gets, the more spam it attracts because it starts popping up all over search engines and other websites. The key to any happy blog is a spam filter that can actually do its job, which Defensio does amazingly, so in the end it doesn’t matter what plugins you have enabled that attract more spam because you know you have something that will catch what you don’t want.

  22. albphone.com lajmet shqip » Blog Archive » Protect Wordpress blog against SPAM on June 23rd, 2008 at 11:03 am

    [...] over at Woman Tribune wrote a very in depth review of Defensio. If your curiostiy of this new SPAM smacker has been piqued, then I suggest you read her post. But [...]

  23. Flingcom on July 3rd, 2008 at 8:12 am

    This sounds really usefull i am am not sure how much it is gonna work becoz most of the spam blockers does’nt block the spams but they block the other mails…

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