DISQUS

The Phoenix Real Estate Guy: Fighting the Comment Spammers

  • Steve Krzysiak · 1 year ago
    Good luck with that. All the big guys have been hit(google, yahoo), if their teams of captcha engineers can't stop spammers, then who can? See http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;48...

    Currently, I leave none of our blogs open to the public, which of course has it's pros and cons.

    The math of course can be cracked, but maybe if we developed a real estate equivalent of the math captcha, we'd be good to go. Think: 'Agent A negotiates contract with age B....who pays the closing cost?'
  • Keahi Pelayo · 1 year ago
    Thanks for the heads up. I am looking forward to hearing if the addition helps with the spam.
    Aloha,
    Keahi
  • Testing new captcha · 1 year ago
    Just testing the new captcha form
  • Jay Thompson · 1 year ago
    Steve -

    That link leads to a main page, which has a BUNCH of links (great site BTW!). You wouldn't happen to have another link direct to the article? I'd like to read it.

    A real estate captcha.... problem is, people (agents included) wouldn't be able to answer the questions 95% of the time! ;)

    There's no question adding this has dropped (significantly) the number of comments flagged by Aksimet. If nothing else, it'll make going through that flagged list a whole lot easier.
  • Steve Krzysiak · 1 year ago
    You're right, I should have double checked the link, it looked funny to me from the get go...
    http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;48...

    Just like car alarms, captchas will always deter, but if someone wants your Shelby badly enough, they'll get it. In fact, Nicholas cage made a movie about it ;) So lets hope your blog isn't targeted by some big time determined spammers.

    Sadly, most agents would fail, but not ours! (covering my behind)

    Take care....
  • Monica · 1 year ago
    Don't you just hate those comment spammers? I get dozens every day. Fortunately my spam filter lets me blacklist a lot of the words most of them use. I don't mind comments that actually say something decent, but the ones that are just garble, or just strings of words related to porn or drugs really get my goat! Good luck with your captcha comment spam trap!
  • Elaine Reese · 1 year ago
    Glad you didn't incorporate the Differential Equations math, although that would certainly cut down on spam ... and any OTHER comments. That was funny.
  • Shailesh Ghimire · 1 year ago
    It as after differential equations that I really started to question my commitment to a graduate degree in Physics. Instead I went to B. School. Much better. :-)
  • poweran · 1 year ago
    If the spam programs can decipher the digits, they can easily tweak their spam bot to sum up 2 numbers and enter the total. But that happens when major sites adapt this total technique. Until then this works... Maybe you can enhance this with mixing some digits with the text.

    BTW, I noticed a minor glitch here. When I click on the total box, cursor focus is moved to website text box (in firefox 3)

    bhatk
  • Jay Thompson · 1 year ago
    @bhatk "BTW, I noticed a minor glitch here. When I click on the total box, cursor focus is moved to website text box (in firefox 3)"

    I see that now too... don't suppose you know how to fix that?
  • Brad @Dakno · 1 year ago
    That's a great point about making it friendly for the visually impaired. I use a math comment plugin but I think i will change to the one you mentioned. By the way, the other math protection is hilarious!
  • Las Vegas High Rise Guy · 1 year ago
    Combating spam is like the arms race....there will always be a raising of the stakes. Look at it this way, your site is so valuable that its worth spamming. Now don't you feel better! :)
  • Jay Valento - Long Beach real · 1 year ago
    I wish I could eliminate the crazy spam I get in comments on our blog. I wonder who takes the time to fill out a form to leave so much junk. Do someone get paid to leave those crazy comments or is it automated some how?

    Jay
  • Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate · 1 year ago
    Jay (great name BTW!) - almost all of the spam commenting is done by automated spambots. There are also likely places overseas where manual comment spam is done. The "captchas" will usually prevent the automated bots from posting. Spam catcher plugins have data bases with the overseas IPs and they do a pretty good job of blocking those.
  • mac @ health leads exclusive · 11 months ago
    I had to implement this on one of my blogs also. I had my email address linked to the comments and every morning my in box would be full of garbage from the blog. It has since worked out well for me as several of my blogs get comments from folks I would like to continue a conversation with.

    <abbr></abbr><abbr>mac´s last blog post..Health Leads / How The Health Leads Business Really Works</abbr>
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