Spam is the bane of anyone who runs a website. If webspam infiltrates yours, who you gonna call? In this case, it won’t be Ghostbusters. What you really need are Spam Busters.

Web Spam

Web Spam

At the moment, there isn’t a magic wand that you can wave around to make blog spam go away. But some spam is good…the type that come from legitimate businesses you deal with and offer you special coupons, discounts or news. Spam in sushi is also a winner.

But there are some things that you can do to reduce the amount of bad and bothersome spam on your websites. But let’s get started with a question first to understand what spam is all about.

Where Does Spam Come From?
If you said “their mommies,” go to the principal’s office for being a joker. Spam is generated by spammers in two ways: manually or automatically. Automatic spam tools look on the Internet for keywords, comment areas, and other vulnerable places to spam. The manual way incorporates cheap labor to do this same function.

Apache and CAPTCHA and Java
CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” Cute, eh? CAPTCHA is basically a challenging device that acts as a gatekeeper by requiring an interactive response from the source that wants to post a comment.

If it is a computer, it won’t be able to do this (so far). If it is a human, the response will be entered. This sort of challenge usually comes in the form of retyping a word or phrase before a comment can be posted.

CAPTCHA is pretty effective and can be implemented through a plugin. In some cases, CAPTCHA may already be a feature of the CMS you’re using, which will make life easier for you.

If you’re using a standard HTML <form> for your input, you can still stop spam by using a technique that uses JavaScript to do this.

Also make sure that any references in your websites do not contain any contact information such as support@blahblahblah.com.

So how will people contact you? You can supply the information by hiding the things that bots are looking for: the “.com” and the “@” symbol.

All you have to do is to replace the elements by reformatting it to say, “support [at] blahblahblah [dot] com. Your users will figure it out and add in the missing pieces.

It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
We may never completely eliminate spam from our lives, but there are available tools out there that can help turn the tide against Spam Vader and his evil empire. May the Spam Be NOT with you.

– Courtesy: Web designer Blog