BlogEngine.NET comment spam filtering

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SpamIt’s been a month or three since I was utterly fed up with comment spam on my blog. Sure, I did turn on comment moderation so you, as a visitor, would not notice this spam if I did not approve it as a valid comment. However, I found myself cleaning up comment spam from in between legitimate comments in the BlogEngine.NET admin interface.

In an effort of trying to reduce comment spam, I tried the following:

  • Close comments after 90 days – This effort worked for a few days, but afterwards I was just seeing more comment spam on the topics that were still open to comments.
  • Use a CAPTCHA – This effort reduced some comment spam, but not all. Which makes me believe there are people actually making a living by just sending out comment spam and filling out CAPTCHA’s out there.
  • Whining and cursing while again cleaning out comments manually – This effort worked, until I found out that this was what I’ve been doing before the other 2 efforts. Back to start…

Luckily, the latest version of BlogEngine.NET (and also earlier version if you go down the hacky road) featured a new comment system, including spam filtering. After using it for a few months, I must say I’m very close to zero comment spam!

The results

I have configured BlogEngine.NET as follows:

  • Comments enabled, never closed
  • Comment moderation: “on” and “automatic”
  • Whitelisting rules enabled (if you have 5 legitimate comments, you are probably OK)
  • Spam filters enabled: AkismetFilter, StopForumSpam and TypePadFilter

Now if you look at the results, there’s an interesting difference between the spam filter services being used:

image

The accuracy of the spam filters is mostly > 90%, for Akismet it’s even 97.30 %. Which I also feel: a small check every week on whether there are spam filter mistakes is quite enough. Only the TypePadFilter is letting me down there, and I will probably disable this one and rely on only two filters.

This is an imported post. It was imported from my old blog using an automated tool and may contain formatting errors and/or broken images.

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6 responses

  1. Avatar for Chris
    Chris November 17th, 2010

    Thanks for the tips. I've implemented these on my own blog. I'll see how well this works in a couple days. I actually disabled comments awhile ago since the spam was ridiculous. Thanks.

  2. Avatar for ehliyet sınav sonuçları
    ehliyet sınav sonuçları January 9th, 2011

    very nice, thank you.

  3. Avatar for walk in bath tubs
    walk in bath tubs March 5th, 2011

    this blog is great , i am also looking forward to get one like blogengine net . may i download it free of charge

  4. Avatar for Helen Lindley
    Helen Lindley June 23rd, 2014

    Thanks for sharing this - we're getting loads of spam on our newly set up blogengine using the basic filter. I think we'll give Akismet a go and see if it cuts it down a bit.

  5. Avatar for Nashid 7
    Nashid 7 July 21st, 2014

    Spam filtering it is a great topic and the post is excellent.I think most of the people face this problem & using your tactic they will solve the problem easily.
    Thanks
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  6. Avatar for sagor
    sagor June 19th, 2016

    i like this blog