Comments on: I’m trying out yet ANOTHER anti comment-spam plugin http://kickasswebdesign.com/wordpress/2006/05/im-trying-out-yet-another-anti-comment-spam-plugin/ Kickass info re CSS, WordPress Themes, ModX Templates, CubeCart Templates, CMS Templates, WebDev News, and occasional weird personal observations. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:19:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: BJ http://kickasswebdesign.com/wordpress/2006/05/im-trying-out-yet-another-anti-comment-spam-plugin/#comment-2680 BJ Fri, 26 May 2006 15:03:27 +0000 http://kickasswebdesign.com/wordpress/2006/05/im-trying-out-yet-another-anti-comment-spam-plugin/#comment-2680 I installed Bad Behavior, which seems to be handling around 95% of it. Akismet, according to a lot of my friends, has as many false positives and false negatives as real returns. I installed Bad Behavior, which seems to be handling around 95% of it.

Akismet, according to a lot of my friends, has as many false positives and false negatives as real returns.

]]> By: Paul Browne - Technology in Plain English http://kickasswebdesign.com/wordpress/2006/05/im-trying-out-yet-another-anti-comment-spam-plugin/#comment-2679 Paul Browne - Technology in Plain English Fri, 26 May 2006 14:45:26 +0000 http://kickasswebdesign.com/wordpress/2006/05/im-trying-out-yet-another-anti-comment-spam-plugin/#comment-2679 Have you tried Akismet that comes with Wordpress 2? Not perfect , but better than waves of Spam. <a href="http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/links/2006/05/20/wordpress-2-in-5-minutes/" rel="nofollow">Paul , Technology in Plain English</a> Have you tried Akismet that comes with Wordpress 2? Not perfect , but better than waves of Spam.

Paul , Technology in Plain English

]]> By: Michael Hampton http://kickasswebdesign.com/wordpress/2006/05/im-trying-out-yet-another-anti-comment-spam-plugin/#comment-2631 Michael Hampton Mon, 22 May 2006 19:19:07 +0000 http://kickasswebdesign.com/wordpress/2006/05/im-trying-out-yet-another-anti-comment-spam-plugin/#comment-2631 Hm. Now that I'm going through your archives here, I think I have a few more comments. Aside from being the author of Bad Behavior, which you said is working pretty well for you, I also had a hand in the Akismet plugin (but not the backend; I make no money from it). I can also tell you that Matt's spoken extensively about <a href="http://akismet.com/commercial/" rel="nofollow">how Akismet will be funded</a>, and it won't be from your typical bloggers who are just trying to keep their own personal sites free of spam. <blockquote>Just to re-iterate, if you don't fall under our pro-blogger or enterprise uses, Akismet is totally free for you to use on your blog.</blockquote> As for false positives, yes, it does have a few. So does virtually every other anti-spam solution out there. My approach to false positives is a bit different: In cases where I can't be reasonably sure that the HTTP request is malicious or spammy, I let it go through. As a result, I estimate that I'm seeing about one false positive per 100,000 requests. And to deal with that, Bad Behavior 2 includes a set of technical support pages displayed to people who might receive false positives that instruct them on how to fix the problem from their end (e.g. remove viruses/spyware, fix the proxy server, etc). On the downside, I could block 100% of spam, but I would have a far higher rate of false positives. So I settle for 99%. In the case of my own blog, for one week, it was 4,200 blocked requests, versus 23 spams that made it through. I always recommend defense in depth, and with Bad Behavior installed, using Akismet is far less annoying; it's much easier to find the one false positive among the 24 comments that Akismet caught during that week, as it would be from over 4,200 spams. And that's why I recommend using Bad Behavior in addition to Akismet. If Matt ever started charging bloggers for Akismet, my recommendation might change, but that's where I stand for now. Hm. Now that I’m going through your archives here, I think I have a few more comments.

Aside from being the author of Bad Behavior, which you said is working pretty well for you, I also had a hand in the Akismet plugin (but not the backend; I make no money from it). I can also tell you that Matt’s spoken extensively about how Akismet will be funded, and it won’t be from your typical bloggers who are just trying to keep their own personal sites free of spam.

Just to re-iterate, if you don’t fall under our pro-blogger or enterprise uses, Akismet is totally free for you to use on your blog.

As for false positives, yes, it does have a few. So does virtually every other anti-spam solution out there. My approach to false positives is a bit different: In cases where I can’t be reasonably sure that the HTTP request is malicious or spammy, I let it go through. As a result, I estimate that I’m seeing about one false positive per 100,000 requests.

And to deal with that, Bad Behavior 2 includes a set of technical support pages displayed to people who might receive false positives that instruct them on how to fix the problem from their end (e.g. remove viruses/spyware, fix the proxy server, etc).

On the downside, I could block 100% of spam, but I would have a far higher rate of false positives. So I settle for 99%. In the case of my own blog, for one week, it was 4,200 blocked requests, versus 23 spams that made it through.

I always recommend defense in depth, and with Bad Behavior installed, using Akismet is far less annoying; it’s much easier to find the one false positive among the 24 comments that Akismet caught during that week, as it would be from over 4,200 spams.

And that’s why I recommend using Bad Behavior in addition to Akismet. If Matt ever started charging bloggers for Akismet, my recommendation might change, but that’s where I stand for now.

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