30 Jul SEO Tips – Spam Defense Catpchas Vs. Bots
Many blogs use comments to provide a more interactive experience for their users. People can share opinions, criticize disagreements, or even just let you know that they found your article helpful. Sadly, when you allow unrestricted access to your comment feed, spammers and spam “bots” quickly move in and start taking advantage for their own malicious SEO purposes. Furthermore, if you require every commenter on your blog to sign up, many people will be turned off at the seemingly blatant attempt to “capture” their information for the sake of interaction. So how do you allow easy access to posting comments and prevent the spammers from taking advantage?
Catpchas To The Rescue:
A catpcha is a special field added to a form that prevents automated services from polluting your feeds with filth. The concept is that it requires just a little bit of human thought to answer , preventing automated “bots” from spamming you constantly. We chose to use a simple question in written format that makes sense to any legitimate users, but confuses bots and thwarts spamming attempts by denying them access. There are many different categories of catpchas, some visual, some verbal, and some written.
HumanCaptcha
HumanCaptcha is plugin written by Outerbridge which uses questions that require human logic to answer them and which machines cannot easily answer. Most captchas are based on the requirement to reproduce a number of randomly-generated characters (which are sometimes blurred, jiggled and/or on a fuzzy background). HumanCaptcha generates a simple question which the user must answer using logical thought. HumanCaptcha is much more accessible than standard captchas, which many people find difficult to read or understand. Visually impaired people are more likely to be able to use HumanCaptcha than a character-based one.
Lock it up!
CAPTCHAs are useful for improving security in a number of situations, for example:
1. Reducing Comment Spam in Blogs
Most bloggers will have come across programs that submit spam comments, often with the aim of improving the search engine ranking of a website. By using a CAPTCHA, only humans can enter comments on your blog, and people do not need to sign up before they enter a comment.
2. Protecting Email Addresses From Scrapers
Spammers crawl the web looking for e-mail addresses rendered in text. CAPTCHAs can hide your e-mail address from web scrapers, by requiring users to solve a CAPTCHA before revealing your e-mail.
3. Deterring Viruses, Worms and Spam
CAPTCHAs may reduce the likelihood of e-mailed viruses, worms and spam, by only accepting an e-mail if it has been established that there is a human behind the sending computer.