[This is taken from a Blog article made upon our Web site.]
A recent comment requested some additional anti-spam option in our Issue Tracker component. That triggered much though on a topic that obviously impact all website and their components, be it blogs, commenting systems etc. There are a number of different parts to preventing spam on a website and this is to expand upon our own particular take on the subject.
Spam is one of the many problem that face web sites today. It is basically the proverbial ‘pain in the neck’ and if not handled correctly can be very time consuming. How often have you viewed web sites where there are totally unrelated comments /registrations/ forums posts which has to make one think about the site's reputation and credibility.
Our site is not immune to this problem and the source is not restricted to any specific country although there does seem to be a preponderance from locations such as Turkey, China, Russian Federation and more recently Ukraine and Brazil.
Spam types can basically be broken down into two types:
This is commonly where users try and register, and is of most importance but not restricted to, social sites especially if they go undetected. We ourselves have had attempts to register accounts which on checking show that the account details (user name) are also registered on other sites (where they have succeeded in being registered) and which are then used to post blog entries or comments on various unrelated topics, but mostly of a nature unrelated to the site interest. Such checking however can be very time consuming which presumably is why many site permit automatic registration relying on the captcha check to stop undesirables!