Spam Alert!

If you have been observant about my blog, you would have noticed that I have inserted a counter to record how many spam comments have been filtered.

It’s unnerving to see that in the past two years, my Akismet has filtered off over 4000 spam comments; that is over 2000 spam comments per year, or about seven to eight spam comments per day.

I am quite surprised at the fact that these spam comments are especially rampant among WordPress blogs but are not so in Blogger, Xanga, Vox, etc. blogs. I do not recall having a spam filter for comments in Blogger, and I don’t remember seeing one in Xanga, too.

Lately, I’ve been receiving a lot of spam comments written in RUSSIAN. I am surprised for the fact that my blog is in English and I am receiving spam comments in Russian. It is as if they understood what I wrote in English, but couldn’t  be bothered to help me understand what they are writing.

Perhaps WordPress ought to impose a word verification requirement for readers who wish to leave comments on posts. Currently, WordPress imposes that the e-mail field must be filled before comments can be posted. This could be one of the methods in which no phantom comments can be avoided, but unfortunately it is not the most effective way to do so. Phoney e-mail addresses can still be inserted to bypass the whole system. However, if the word verification were imposed, then it is far more reliable because the word projected during the word verification process are actually random letters that must be typed out exactly the same.

Besides, not many people are fond about leaving their e-mail addresses even to bloggers whom they know. I would feel a little more apprehensive about giving my e-mail address to anyone because of my sheer hatred of spam.

I am happy, however, that the Akismet spam robot has not failed me at all. It has managed to detect all spam comments correctly and that saved me the trouble of having to go through every spam comment thoroughly to make sure that no “false spam” is being filtered as well.

However, I would very much prefer of not having to delete the filtered spam comments myself. Therefore, a word verification requirement would save me that trouble.

PEOPLE, NO MORE SPAM, PLEASE. SPAMMING MY BLOG IS POINTLESS. I WILL NOT WAVER TO YOUR SILLY PRETENTIOUS OF GRANDEUR.