Back from holiday, I discovered that my personal site has been on the receiving end of a sustained spam attack.  The first was an attempt by a spam-cyber-machine to plant 20 comments about online poker, strip-poker, etc.  The next consisted of an amazing 72 tries.  And now I note a smaller shot at planting something about loans.

But before we query the Almighty about why in his divine wisdom he permits so great an evil as spam to exist in his almost perfect blogosphere,  consider this: for every **** in the world there’s an angel.   There are altruistic wonks and techie-types who spend hours and hours of their time devising free tools for us to use on the internet. 

"Dr. Dave" is one of the angels.  On his blog he tells us that he lives in Tokyo, has worked as a bartender in a strip-joint, and likes cats as well as chocolate.  He is also the author of the wonderful Spam Karma.

Spam Karma is a plug-in (extension or add-on) for  Wordpress blogging software.  It has successfully batted a century of spams against my personal site into the outer-bloggersphere.

If you have a blog, you should get your spam-defences up.  Unfortunately, if you blog with Google’s poplular ‘Blogger’ tool, I don’t think there is much you can do.   Spam-fighting is one of the reasons to opt for something more sophisticated like Wordpress.  (CORRECTION - I see now that Blogger has introduced ‘word verification’ to stop spam - Hugh).

We also have a long list of banned words.  If you have a legitimate reason to comment on this site about poker or Viagra,  you will have to wait until we have approved your comment.

Some bloggers ensure that everyone who posts a comment has to be approved at least once.  I have commented on some blogs and have never been approved.  I think they just don’t check for comments waiting in moderation.

Other blogs don’t allow comments altogether.  These are usually businesses who don’t like the idea of people criticising them.  It goes against the spirit of blogging, and makes you look cowardly.  Blogging is about being more open.  It’s also about interacting with the outside world.  That’s why comments are so important.

Another useful ploy is to randomly generate some numbers and letters, and ask commenters to copy them into a form.  Spam machines can’t read the letters.   This defence is called a ‘Catchpa’ (or word verification).   We might use it one day, but as far as I know, there’s no easy way to implement it on Wordpress yet.

Whatever you do, it’s a good idea to have a comment policy.   There’s a German blogger who warns people not violate German law, comment off- topic, or repeat themselves.  He’s perhaps a little off-putting.    But it’s polite to let people know what’s going to happen to their comment. Will it appear right away?  Will it  wait to be approved?  See our comment form below - oh, and please leave a comment.  If you repeat yourself, we won’t shoot you.