Comment Spam

Had over 700 spam comments posted this afternoon to this blog, sometimes as often as three a second. I very quickly wrote up a regex-based spam filter which worked a treat, but this is indicative of a real push by spammers on my blog – this is at least a 70-fold increase on the last ‘attack’. I wonder how other bloggers are faring today?

As an aside, what are people’s thoughts on my releasing of the regexes I used to catch the spam? Obviously it gives the spammers clues to get around my filter, but spam is becoming such a major problem a collaborative effort seems the only way.

Perhaps I/we/somebody should run a web service. Comment content goes in, yes/no response comes out. There are privacy issues though, and a nice juicy target for DoS attacks (cf. previous attacks on anti-spam outfits).