I wondered how long it would take – and the answer is one and a half to two months.
One and a half to two months, that is, before spammers found a new potential outlet for their rubbish: the comments section on this blog. (Not that there are very many people reading it!)
No spammer has actually tried using the comments to spread their garbage as yet, but today I received a user registration from a very spammy looking address.
Well, I have news for you Mr Potential-Spammer – any user’s first comment, and ALL comments including URLs have to be approved by me. Don’t bother.
Hi Vince, I spotted your story about Barclay’s bank on the comments about paypal @ the register, and got hooked into reading your blog. As an avid WordPress user myself, I’ve found akismet (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/) to be incredibly accurate at spotting comment spam – which (obviously combined with the forcing of user registration) should do the trick nicely.
HI Niddler – don’t get too hooked. Updates are likely to be infrequent and uninteresting in general. :p I am aware of Askimet – the package is installed by default, and I simply haven’t enabled it. (Yet). I will do if the spamminess becomes a problem – but for now, it’s barely noticeable. I think that along with the one mentioned in this entry, I’ve only had one other on one of the other two sites.