October 29, 2014

I Don't Require Word Verification but You May See it Anyway

Well, Blogger has changed something and now some readers are seeing word verification show up when they start to comment. I dislike those confusing little things as much as anybody does and I set my preferences years ago so that those puzzles are not supposed to show up, but Blogger now makes it appear if they think you are anonymous. The work-around is to sign in to Blogger or OpenID before you start commenting. I'm sorry if this is inconvenient for you but I don't have a way to prevent this other than what I have already done. I don't even accept anonymous comments so I don't know why my blog host thinks I want this feature.

By the way, you can always refresh the coded words (using a little button) until you see one that's readable. Many of them aren't, so I when I come across one I often feel I am seeing some weird combination of a vision test and a sobriety test!

Some bloggers have had huge problems with spambot comments so I understand why they desire a CAPTCHA. So far I have been able to control spam by (1) not allowing anonymous comments, and (2) having comments held for approval on posts that are more than a few days old.  Spammers generally comment on an old post because they have used a search engine to find posts related to the item they are advertising.



11 comments:

  1. yup, i've had a few report they got it on my place, too, and i am very anti word ver. and my settings definitely say NO!

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  2. I monitor my blog in the exact same way that you do.. with moderation on older posts and no anonymous comments. It's been just fine this way.

    I think it's just one of those Blogger glitches because I'm hearing a few people complain about it on on their blogs. Hopefully it will resolve itself like these things often do.

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  3. Yeah, I've noticed the dreaded word verification is showing up on my blog too - and I have it turned off in my settings. But when I'm signed in to Google I'm able to comment on other people's blogs without activating this feature (it didn't come up when I left this comment on your blog). To combat spam, I also don't allow anonymous comments, and require commenters to be registered. This has worked very well for me. I hardly ever get any spam.

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  4. I don't moderate or require verification. So far, so good...

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  5. I didn't know this was happening! I may have to set it up on mine!

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  6. Yes, once I put a stop to anonymous comments, I stopped getting spam.

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  7. I allow anonymous posts, but have a caption requirement on posts more than a month old. I've found on both of my blogs that they do target older posts, particularly with certain key words. My writer's blog has one Oscars post that still gets spam attempts several times a week, and the post is two or three years old.

    I have receiced the same notification about occasional captchas turning up in fresh blogs. I don't like captchas, but at least some of the time, they're just numbers, which are easy to deal with.

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  8. Even though I'm signed in with my Open ID (Wordpress), I STILL have to type in word verification! Very annoying. I notice it's switched on here on your blog. I wonder if it's possible to choose to have just numbers as the Captcha code.

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  9. Yes, I require approval on comments more than a few days old and rarely have spam now.

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  10. I approve all comments and I almost never sign out of blogger so I'm not sure what's going on. I haven't had any comments about word verification so I just hope it's yet-another glitch.

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  11. I do exactly what you do to avoid most spams... I do not allow anonymous comments and have to approve comments of old posts.... Haven't had many problems at all with spam (thank goodness)... BUT--I despise Word Verification --and don't usually go to a blog that keeps it... All they have to do is to approve EVERYTHING that comes into them. Then they can delete the spam before it is published... I don't understand why some people don't realize this... Oh Well.
    Hugs,
    Betsy
    I don't think (at least nobody has said anything) that I'm having a problem with WV on my blog. I certainly hope not.

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