Comments on: Hot or Not: TypePad AntiSpam

By: Álvaro Degives-Más

Álvaro Degives-Más — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:23:55 +0000

Jonathan, so… how do you think that SK/BB work? At the very least, they need to have a look at the IP address of the commenter, which together with the date and time on which it’s posted is (or: could be) personally identifiable information. It’s just the way things work - and have to work even, as exchanges of tokens is part and parcel of today’s traffic infrastructure.

Now, if you want to run your own blacklist/scrubbing server…

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:55:52 +0000

Hmm. Viper007Bond’s comment made me think about something. After reading the Defensio site he linked to, I realized that each and every comment made goes to the Defensio servers (or Akismet, or TypePad Anti-Spam). It seems like we need to discolse this in our privacy policies. Otherwise, get an in-house solution. Granted, these server farm defense mechanisms work astoundingly well at thwarting spam, but what about personally identifiable information? Who’s to say these companies aren’t taking the comments and crunching numbers from them to determine browsing habits and the like? Call me paranoid, but I’ve just started re-thinking even using Akismet. Maybe I’ll go back to the good ‘ol days of Spam Karma/Bad Behaviour, and perhaps mix it up with a Preview button or something.

By: Viper007Bond

Viper007Bond — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 02:51:57 +0000

Nice to see yet another alternative, but I’ll be sticking with Defensio. I can’t argue with it’s performance on my blog (stats since March 23rd, 2008):

* 142223 spam
* 393 legitimate comments
* 58 false negatives (undetected spam)
* 35 false positives (legitimate comments identified as spam)

By: ajua

ajua — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:21:09 +0000

I think that the initiative is great, but i will wait until i read some more about how it fares with Akismet.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:09:43 +0000

The plugin is based very much on the Akismet open source plugin for WordPress, so providing Matt with very clear credit is the right thing to do.

I have found it doesn’t handle floods of automated spam as well as Spam Karma

By: Álvaro Degives-Más

Álvaro Degives-Más — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:56:23 +0000

Um… I just installed the TypePad AntiSpam plugin and activated it, in lieu of Akismet, and it seems to work, but… I think it’s worthwhile to check out the text in the comment header of the script, especially the bits identifying the author:

Author: Matt Mullenweg, Six Apart Ltd.
Author URI: http://www.sixapart.com/

Heh. So who says they’re competitors? Matt been shopping much lately? Not going to speculate, but I will say this: “Movable Press” just doesn’t make a good name.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:48:13 +0000

Well written, Mark. And quite objective. I do tend to agree with the previous two commentors, though, and will probably at least give TypePad AntiSpam a try. As far as having multiple layers of security is concerned (and the argument of its negative effect on visitors,) that was the de facto standard on WP blogs for quite some time before the advent of Akismet.

Yet, on the opposite side of that coin, from their wording, it appears to perform in much the same way as Akismet. So I don’t see how it’s different. The benefit of multiple layers of security is having a totally different approach at the second level. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think this is the answer we’re looking for. Besides that, I never get false negatives from Akismet. It just works. Then again, I haven’t tried the plugin.

By: Álvaro Degives-Más

Álvaro Degives-Más — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:16:59 +0000

Frankly, seeing the Six Apart enlisting in the anti-spam legion with a contribution positioned as a serious, new and thorough solution counts as another “Hot” for me, by itself. So, I respectfully disagree with placing that aspect on the “or Not” heap, as Six Apart is anything but one of the bunch and if one of the Big Players weighs in, that counts as a good thing in my book. As to what I’d term as “the open source disqualifier” I believe that’s strongly mitigated by this:

Six Apart is not sharing all of the rules and logic that run their implementation of the TypePad AntiSpam engine

Whether it’s to weed out bugs, malware or spam - open source initiatives are IMHO far preferable over closed solutions. Kudos to Six Apart for their at least promising initiative, even though I’m at this stage a bit reluctant to add it to my low-traffic blog, as Akismet is remarkably effective as it is and (I fear, without testing) a double layer may well impact user-friendliness. I might actually switch over, just to see it at work.

By: nik

nik — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:30:42 +0000

’security through obscurity’ isn’t an argument, and it applies to spam protection as well. an effective solution wouldn’t rely on spammers not knowing how it works - like bayesian based filtering

keeping things centralized isnt a good argument either. a spammer will send the same comments and trackbacks to thousands of blogs, you only need to cover one of those blogs to get a sample. some solutions dont depend on getting feedback from thousands of blog admins, as asking a blogger for feedback on what is spam/ham implies that there is spam getting through ..

By: Neil

Neil — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:49:22 +0000

I think its great to see how we are working together to tackle a growing problem. Its a brave move by Matt but that just goes to show that what he says he also does. Great job wordpress, this will make everything better for the bloggers to come regardless of what platform they choose

By: John

John — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:23:48 +0000

I think you hit it right on the nose in regards to the biggest concern: Open Source…

*doh*!