The CAPTCHA reinvented: PlayThru

The evolution of spam

Many blog owners will be familiar with one particular pest on the internet: spam bots. This blog is no exception, but I was determined to keep my pages clear of digital graffiti even when I don't have much time to post regularly.

Fortunately there are some nice and unobtrusive countermeasures available, like Akismet. They work pretty much like the spam detection for your email. For some time, this used to be enough to keep the spam bots at bay, but spammers are constantly changing their angle of attack. Many comments that are posted nowadays don't even contain any links anymore. With some luck, they can even pass for a comment from an interested reader. I'm not completely sure how exactly this helps the spammer, but no doubt they are trying to raise the reputation level of the IP address or email used to post the comment with, so t hey are more likely to pass through filters like Akismet later. In any case, spam filters are not as effective against these messages as they are against something containing one or more actual links.

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