Robotic Spams – HELP!

A reader - Peldhen Sonam Nima (PSN) - made a comment on my post titled “Economic Crisis or Spending Fatigue?” and made a request to disable the Word Verification process - on the grounds that it made commenting cumbersome. I promptly complied and disabled the need for the Word Verification process at the end of a comment, before the comment can be submitted. 

BAD MOVE!!! 

Since then, my Blog posts have been lambasted with dozens of SPAMs. Fortunately, I moderate the comments - in the sense that I require every comment to be authorized by me - good, bad and the ugly. Therefore, the readers do not get to see all the trash being posted on my Blog because I do not allow their publication.

I suspected that it must be ROBOTIC SPAMMING. The spamming started with the deactivation of the Word Verification process - meaning that something or someone cannot spam if he/she/it is required to type a set of words. In an effort to understand what this was all about, I Googled and stumbled upon the following:

“Robotic spam are spam comments created by automated scripts/bots. They contribute to over 99% of comment spam in blogs. Comment spam has gained prominence due to the ease with which spamming operations can be scripted for large-scale campaigns. Most robotic spams either try to spam by submitting comment form or by using trackbacks. Comment Guard Pro stops all kind of robotic spams from reaching your blog”. 

I have a mind to reactive the Word Verification requirement - once again. But I wonder if I should - because that would inconvenience my readers and commentators. Well I think for now, I will keep it disabled since if any one were to suffer inconvenience - it might as well be me - so my readers can have an enjoyable experience. I will keep on removing the SPAMs as they appear. If it gets too difficult, I will have to think of installing the software mentioned above - Comment Guard Pro. But I do not have a Credit Card to make the purchase!!!! GRRRRR.

I GIVE UP!!!!. The spamming has gotten too heavy .... so I am reinstating the Word Verification.