Attack of the Spambots!

Sketch by Cat Troiano

Babbling Books has been beset by evil forces. It started as a trickle of spam messages appearing on old posts. It began to slowly build. It has reached a point where scores of these little beasties are attempting to post themselves upon my site on a daily basis. I have even discovered a few in the upholstery of my sofa and two under the sheets of my bed. At least my cat is happy as this morning I found one in a half devoured state on the floor.

As first Blogger’s spam filtering caught most. However as the vermin multiplied, more and more crept through. I would check my inbox more and more frequently and zap them in an attempt to stem the tide. Within the past few weeks the little buggers have nearly overwhelmed me.

Seriously, due to the massive influx of spam comments I have been forced to take defensive measures. It has reached the point where there are over sixty attempted postings per day. I have resisted doing so for too long as I hate to make it difficult for folks to leave comments. I absolutely loathe word verification so that option was out of the question. I attempted to set Blogger’s options to allow registered comments only. Though this is supposed to allow users of Wordpress, Twitter, etc. to easily comment, several of my fellow bloggers have informed me that they were unable to leave comments when I set this option. I believe that I have settled upon a good solution by enabling comment moderation. Though I know that this removes some of the feeling of instant gratification involved with leaving a comment, it seems to be the least burdensome alternative. I realize that scourge has, as of late, made it impossible for folks to subscribe to follow up comments. It should be now be safe to do so.

If anyone has any difficulties leaving comments (other then the known issue of it being very inconvenient to leave comments on Blogger when using some mobile operating systems) feel free to email me at EmperorbjtATGmail.com or tweet me at @BrBabblingBooks.