Tech Goes Boom

SpamLookup impressions

We've been running Brad Choate's SpamLookup for a week or so both on this server and on my personal blog, and it's been a real winner—we've gone from having to delete a few comment spams a day that MT-Blacklist put into moderation to essentially zero comment spams. This is a huge relief.

"Just" comparing originating IP addresses to a real-time blacklist of open proxies and comparing trackback ping IPs to the IP address of the supposedly originating blog kills most of the comment spam dead.

Once you are sure SpamLookup is only blocking the nastiness and letting legitimate comments through, set it to deny instead of moderate, and your mail box will be free of super-perv pr0n and online casinos.

One can assume the spammers will adapt and find ways to fake out SpamLookup, but for the moment, they are on the run and the unpleasantness of mopping up URLs to the seedy side of the Internet is but a bad memory.

Brad Choate deserves a medal.