[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

[bryant]

If you keep a blog, this is important. You should read it and take heed. If you use Typepad or LiveJournal, you're covered (or will be soon). If you use Movable Type, see this post. If you use Blogger or Blogspot... um, I dunno, but since it's a Google initiative and Blogger/Blogspot is owned by Google, I imagine support will come pretty quickly.

Now, this isn't going to stop spammers from spitting out comments all over your blog. It will make them less likely to benefit from those comments. It would be nice to think that less benefit means less spam, but let's be serious -- the people selling the software that generates this spam aren't going to tell their customers that it's a worthless activity. Still, you're cutting back on whatever money spammers are making, and that's a good enough reason to do it in my book.

Comments

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

You know, I hit a moderate number of blogs/online journals etc, and I'm not sure if I've ever really noticed comment spam. Where is this a big problem?

[bryant]

Welp, you don't see it on my blog cause I delete a few hundred comments per week. Here's what happens when you don't:

http://captology.stanford.edu/notebook/archives/000074.html

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Wow. Alrighty then, I stand corrected.

[mcurry.livejournal.com]

If you don't notice comment spam, it usually means that the owner of the blog is spending a lot of time and effort getting rid of it. My blogs, which are hardly popular, get lots of comment spam on a regular basis, and that's just the stuff that makes it through MT BLacklist.

[head58.livejournal.com]

I had a message board on a website I used to run (before I gave up the domain name and a week later it was a tranny pr0n site. No lie.) we got so much spam it was amazing. We could have had our pick of Russian mail-order brides, any day of the week!