Fight against spam – Round IV, AntiSpam Bee enters the war
Recently, I saw a new anti spam plug-in listed on WordPress’ plug-in repository called “AntiSpam Bee”. Although the name of the plug-in was kinda cute, it didn’t make me feel like trying it, at first. I thought this is just another “the-ultimate-anti-spam” wannabe but today, I decided to try it out anyway.
To my surprise, this new WordPress comment anti spam plug-in looks like a winner, for now.
Why you should love AntiSpam Bee
- AntiSpam Bee uses only a few lines of code (uses almost no resources to execute)
- AntiSpam Bee is not like Akismet or Defensio where you need to validate all comments (including the spam comments)
- AntiSpam Bee is not another captcha (or math queries) plug-in. It keeps your readers happy.
- AntiSpam Bee doesn’t store any information (no database installation needed).
- AntiSpam Bee doesn’t require any template modification (just install and activate).
- AntiSpam Bee also protects against pingbacks and trackbacks.
How AntiSpam Bee works
You can find out how it works on the official page of the plug-in. The bad news is that it’s in German. The good news is I had a rough translation (using one of my Firefox translator plug-in) here:
The comment field of the contribution side is exchanged and faded out by means of “display:none”. The principle of the “bee” goes on in the technical, however, absolutely as only one field to make invisible (on it only very silly Bots are taken in). It are put neither Cookies, nor activated JavaScript is required. The solution is reliable, speak no comments of the users get lost.
Okay, it may not be so clear after all but it has something to do with the plug-in adding a dummy comment field form and hiding the real one with the CSS code “display:none”. Looking at the source after the plug-in has been activated, I could see these lines on my comment form:
<textarea name=”comment-7dec5″ cols=……..></textarea><textarea name=”comment”….style=”display:none”>
So it looks like AntiSpam Bee really tricks the spam bot comments to go to an invalid comment field. The dummy field name seems to be different on every post, so I hope that it’s enough to shoo the bots away. But honestly speaking, I’m just guessing here so I don’t really want to look like I know exactly what the plug-in is doing.
“I still don’t trust AntiSpam Bee!”
Same here! I never trust any automated anti spam plug-ins simply because I don’t want it to catch genuine comments as spam comments. Not to worry, there is a setting on AntiSpam Bee to mark the comment as spam rather than automatically delete it away. I encourage you to tick on this first to give you more confidence in using AntiSpam Bee.
I ‘ve already turned off my captcha anti spam plug-in and activated Antispam Bee. Spam comments were caught straight after as you can see here in my screenshot:
Three comments were all caught by Defensio as spam comments. AntiSpam Bee only marks 2 comments as spam. Guess what, the first comment is actually a genuine comment (I can confirm it) and AntiSpam Bee didn’t catch it as a spam. So thumbs up for AntiSpam Bee here! I like what I see so far.
AntiSpam Bee is a winner, for now
I’m not sure how effective and bullet-proof this method is so I’m hoping that the spammers won’t catch up that quickly. When they’ve found how AntiSpam Bee works, I hope that it’s not easy/possible to break. The fact that the method is so transparent probably proves that AntiSpam Bee is uncrackable. I’m not too sure. What do you think?
To try AntiSpam Bee, go to its official plug-in page at WordPress here
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thanks for this information.
Mike, Let me also try this. The current one i am using is the one which uses cookies and javascript. I am almost getting 0 spams. But, for a real visitor who has cookies and javascript disabled won’t be able to comment. This is the only drawback.
Yeah, some techie people are quite paraonid and they like their JavaScript turned off. And since both of us are running tech blogs, this cannot get worse
Give Anti Spam Bee a try!
Interesting post on this new plugin, was intrigued to see that it didn’t mark a genuine comment as spam whereas Defensio did!
Well Defensio works by analyzing the comments (like Akismet) whereas the Bee removes auto spam posting. So they both work well together
I really like the experiment that you are conducting to test out your anti spam. How is it working? will you talk about it in a later post?
This is an excellent review of AntiSpam bee
Mmm I hope so. I think I’ve told everything about the plug-in though. So far so good. Zero spam coming in and all legitimate comments are caught properly
Hi Michael
Stopping by after reading your post on the EC forums for comments on testing out your new comment spam plugin.I see from your post it seems to be working well.
Thanks for helping out, Steven. Appreciate it
I wrote a similar program for my non-wordpress site and it does seem to do well to catch spam. The spam naturally fills out comment fields so it does a good job misleading it to invisible fields. I’ll have to look this up, though right now, akismet has been doing fine for me.
Looks pretty good
Was my last comment marked as spam?
It should have been marked as a spam,as I posted only a 3 word comment,btw.
Seems better than Akismet-Have heard that some legitimate comments are also marked as spam by akismet sometimes.
Very interesting plug in. I do like the fact that it doesn’t add a load to your database. I have never used captcha and never felt the need for it actually.
Using askimet and bad behavior plugins seem to work for me.
so far, i’m satisfied with Akismet..let’s see if my comment is considered SPAM !
Nothing is uncrackable. Automatic processing of natural language is still in it’s infancy. Make money fast. Make money fast. Make money fast.
sounds interesting indeed; though as Margaret says the back end for BB is very sweet indeed and its reliance on project honeypot and the such make it a nice piece of kit.
This looks like a really neat plug-in!
Akismet usually works well enough for me although it does get its share of false positives. On all my blogs I moderate first time commenters and on some that are designed for niche marketing I moderate everything and only let through keyword relevant comments.
Using CSS and Javascript to fool the ‘bots is a good technique. I’ve done that with some themes I’ve designed by playing around with the comment submit button and code behind it. I try not to overdo it though because Google is a ‘bot too.
Thanks for your review; seems really comprehensive. Will certainly keep spam bee in mind.
Thanks for this. I’ve noted this one and I am going to give this a try if I get unhappy with the new set of anti-spam plugin combination that I’m using.
I am assuming that we just need one plugin right? The idea of putting some “spam” on queue is still a good one (wp-spamfree seem to delete “valid” spam comments).
Yup. I even turned off my Akismet and Defensio now as they are no longer needed. However, empty comments being submitted through the form still can get through, though
Is it working?
This certainly seems like something worth trying if for no other reason than that it works differently. When one solution isn’t so great, it’s good to try another algorithm. Thanks for the review of your experiences with it.
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