tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791273878776097990.post5227682615257551300..comments2009-08-01T21:46:02.591+10:00Sarah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12186148754487217781noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791273878776097990.post-40243919379197169342009-04-10T15:12:00.000+10:002009-04-10T15:12:00.000+10:00Definitely frustrating. <BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://technobabblepro.blogspot.com/2009/04/captcha-gotcha.html" REL="nofollow">This</A> recent article on Slashdot is somewhat apropos: while I am not sure about his people-are-to-lazy thing I think the economics of breaking captchas is pretty compelling.<BR/><BR/>I wonder if actual authentication of users would help? I notice that as I post here I can choose an identity from one of several sources. I suppose such as system can only be as good as the sign-up process.Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01272726132970652973noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791273878776097990.post-63654452441552203382009-04-09T22:10:00.000+10:002009-04-09T22:10:00.000+10:00I don't get it either.<BR/><BR/>I don't understand what they're getting out of it.<BR/><BR/>Unless the bot/script is amazingly broken, I think all it tries to do is get the URL in there.<BR/><BR/>You're right that most of the links have 'nofollow' in them - put in there by the blogging software.<BR/><BR/>This is an example of one that doesn't:<BR/><BR/>http://geekswithblogs.net/vganesh/archive/2005/06/16/43921.aspx<BR/><BR/>This site seems to use "CodeCanvas", and since the post commented on was 2005 maybe the software is behind the times.<BR/><BR/>Evil Promotions might count on that.<BR/><BR/>You'd think if running their turks has some cost that they'd be a bit more discerning about what sites they target.<BR/><BR/>I'm going to keep digging, asking a few friends and see what I can come up with.Sarah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12186148754487217781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791273878776097990.post-62159245132620093662009-04-09T20:56:00.000+10:002009-04-09T20:56:00.000+10:00I don't get it. Was there something else in their post? A URL or something that was supposed to get in there?<BR/><BR/>There was a problem with comment spam containing links but when Google started ignoring links with rel="nofollow", pretty much all the blogging platforms started putting those into links found in comments.<BR/><BR/>The idea being that leaving a comment on someone's site with a URL won't automatically get you some of the credibility of the original site (though you'd think Google might have a better way to distinguish author-inserted links and comment links by now).<BR/><BR/>I get few enough actual comments on my blog that I just turned on moderation. It means I need to explicitly allow ever comment to hit my blog (not something you can do if you have a high volume of commenting I guess) but the volume I get is small enough that it is no big burden (only 2 clicks if I'm at home or work).<BR/><BR/>I think the big scary "your comment must be moderated" messages on my pages also serve to stop the comment spammers because (while I haven't tried actual counting) I seem to get far less comment spam attempts than I used to get.<BR/><BR/>Oh and for the record. I hate captchas because I seem to have more trouble doing them than a computer. I don't know why that is, something about them is hard for me to decode.a1291762http://www.blogger.com/profile/12240112348574298184noreply@blogger.com