As recent stats show, more than half of the comments posted on sites or forums are spam. They do not carry any useful information and are often malicious. Users can get viruses from opening and running unknown attachments. These can disable the computer and even hack personal data - passwords from bank cards, ID data, and so on. Spambots increase the load on the site's server, which significantly slows down the page load speed and general site rank. On top of that, bots also distort site analytics data. This affects the analysis of behavioral metrics, traffic, and target audience.
How to Protect Your Site From Spam?
It is never a good idea to wait for the very first sign of a spam attack. You should be ready for it in advance. That’s why we strongly recommend that you read this post, choose the proper spam combat method, and implement it on your end. Be it https://cleantalk.org/ anti-spam by Cleantalk or any other solution, it will protect your online resource as well as visitors of your site.
1 - Update & Fix Your Website Software Regularly
It is especially easy for spammers to infiltrate sites that have security issues. As a rule, these are old versions of blogs, message boards, etc. Therefore, it is highly important that you take the time to regularly update the site's software.
2 - Install the Captcha
Of course, the user can be annoyed when the site asks to enter a captcha. But on the other hand, you need to understand that a captcha is needed precisely for security. Captcha asks users to confirm that they are not robots. If it is entered correctly, it will mean that a live person, not an automated script, posts comments on your site.
3 - Block Suspicious Activity of Users
Many content management systems have the ability to set a time limit between posts that site visitors can make on your site. You can also install plugins that search for excessive traffic from individual IP addresses or proxy servers and other activity that more closely resembles the activity of bots than living people.
4 - Check the Most Active Users
Webmasters and site administrators know their regular readers. But if a user appeared on the site quite recently and posts too many messages on the site, then there are all the prerequisites to check one’s profile and make sure that this is not a spam bot.
5 - Disable Some Types of Comments
You can turn off comment posting for some old publications or themes made a couple of years ago. If users no longer interact with this content, then completely disabling comments will prevent spammers from using the forum.
6 - Create a Spam Blacklist
It is recommended to add terms to the blacklist that can only be used by spammers. They can be taken from existing spam comments or searched on other forums or sites. Obviously, in such a way, you can block inappropriate comments immediately, especially if they contain blacklisted words. Specially installed plugins or built-in functions can mark such comments as spam.
7 - Use the “Nofollow” Attribute for Links in Comments
By default, many sites automatically add this attribute to every comment visitors add. Such an approach will deter spammers from visiting your site.
