Spam can be very dangerous for website visitors as it is used to collect personal data which spammers then use at their discretion. Spam messages often contain links to third-party resources of cyber criminals. If you click on them, you can share some confidential information: logins, passwords, bank card number, ID data, etc. The presence of such spam in the comments of your site may damage the efficiency and reputation of your website. That is the reason why spam protection is required.
How to Organize Your Spam Protection?
The easiest way to protect the website from undesirable letters is to use various plugins. We suggest you get acquainted with some of them which can easily detect spam IP and blacklist it.
Of course, you can try to avoid the spam, using some simple methods, such as the disabling the comments function, restricting access, or even “captcha”. However, it is suitable only for non-profit, single-page, and landing sites. Users are more likely to leave feedback if they do not need to go through a long and boring process of verification. So when choosing a plugin, consider what methods it uses to verify data to make the site surfing as comfortable as possible.
In addition to spam in your site comments, your site may occur to be infected with a spam script. As a result, you can lose your reputation and get sanctions from searching services and it will not be available for visiting. That is why it is desirable to know that your site is “clean”. To find it out, you can use CleanTalk, which also provides the domain/IP checking of spam activity.
1. CleanTalk
CleanTalk is a cloud-based protection system for restricting spam in comments, during registration, mailing via contact forms and creating trackbacks. Also, the plugin filters orders, widgets and email newsletters. It doesn’t use captcha or other techniques. The plugin operation procedure uses the following criteria:
- The user`s comments have previously been blacklisted;
- The comment contains a link that is on the blacklist;
- There is a request to enable JavaScript;
- The comment is too fast for a person.
The CleanTalk plugin also provides analytic information on its website. The developers also state that the probability of false positives for this filter is 0.001%.
2. WP Spam-Shield Anti-Spam
- Works with all popular and e-commerce plugins on the site;
- Protects against spam bots and malicious letters;
- Operates with JS / Cookies Anti-Spam Layer and Algorithmic Anti-Spam Layer;
- Promises zero false positives;
- Uses a spam queue filter, which analyzes the information before it enters the WordPress database;
- Stops spam registration attempts.
3. Akismet
Spam guard for all WordPress sites by default. The plugin is a solution to protect the site without charges.
- Automatically check the comments and use filters;
- Comment history is saved, which allows the user to check if his or her comment has been marked as spam;
- Supports the ability to eliminate spam completely;
- Supports 24 languages.
As you see, spam protection is a vital topic for Internet security. Ask your questions in comments if you have them.