Comment Spam - BLAM! BLAM!

Clever commenter Brent, below, has alerted me that I can turn on something called "word verification" to stop "comment spam"

"Comment spam" is a particularly odious variety of parasite, through which links to commercial websites are embedded in alleged "comments" on weblogs. Their combination of sucking up the blog topic and mindless pushing of the website can result in some incredibly offensive 'comments'.

"I really enjoy your weblog on Raising a Deaf Child. If you have children, they might be interested in winning a free iPod."

Or, "You are doing a great job in this weblog on Rebuilding My Life after Losing My Arms in Iraq. You might want to check out my Rolex replica site."

Or, "Congratulations on your great blog on My Divorce Journey: One Man's Heartbroken Story. Did you know that meds can help make you a real man?

That kind of thing.

Anyway, since these "comments" are sprinkled by bots and not real people, one way to defeat them is through "word verification". You've all encountered this somewhere when registering or signing up for something - a box containing slightly distorted letters with a request to manually type the letters in a box, in order to continue or post. Bots can't read these letters. People can. So from now on, when you post comments, there'll be a wee extra step I hope you won't mind completing.

I've been manually deleting "comment spam" as it appears (got 11 in one day once - I felt like Futurama's Dr. Zoidberg at first - "Hooray! People are paying attention to me!"). As a result of my reluctant vigilance, few of you have probably seen it here (hi, Carl!). Thanks to Brent's suggestion, fewer still will - and I won't have to dash to the blog every time I get notified via email that I've got a new bug.

ronnie