Well, hopefully, I’ve put an end or at least reduced the amount of comment spam I get on this blog.
In the last month I’ve been getting over 1000 comments a day that are spam and boy it drives you nuts!
So tonight I have spent about 4 hours upgrading the blog to the latest version, sorting out a few security issues that I didn’t like and got Recaptcha working.
What is Recaptcha?
Well this is what I thought was cool. There is a project running to Scan and OCR all these old books. Out of all these old books, there are words that the big scanners can’t recognise, so, it flags them and puts an image of them into the Recaptcha database.
So, you go and fill out a comment now, and you are presented with 2 words, you type them in as you see them and not only can you post a comment, but you’re actually helping the project by solving words that the scanners couldn’t solve.
So, how does this reduce spam?
Well, Bots (Big automated computers out there to seek and destroy!), scour the internet and look for forms, when they find one, they try and fill it out with comment spam. Viagra, Penis Enlargements, that sort of stuff.
So, we use a Captcha to add a human element, something that computers will find harder to read, and usually will fend them off and prevent them from submitting the form!
Cool Ha! Well, I think so, as it’s going to save me deleting shit loads of spam…. well I hope so. 
Cheers,
G
