Some Comments on Common Comment Security

If you've ever tried leaving a comment on my blog, you've undoubtedly come across an interesting feature: you are asked to read a series of weird-shaped random letters, such as "irbmnteug", and manually retype them in the provided box before your comment can be posted. In fact, some people have been prevented from leaving comments at all due to this feature (presumably because these people cannot read, so goodness knows what they're doing on my blog in the first place). I've been asked why this feature is necessary, and so I've decided to post an explanation.

First off, I should note right off the bat that I think it is a very useful vocabulary building feature. Without it, many people would never learn such wonderful words like "vrlnmkd", "cyrklmpt" and "zrcxopft", which will undoubtedly be very useful to know if, say, you should ever visit Czechoslovakia, where those are actual words in the local language. Without the benefit of my blog's comment security feature, you would be totally unfamiliar with such words, and you would have to resort to doing what most tourists (and many of the residents) do, which is to make them up. ("Waiter! I'll have the ckljrto soup with a side dish of prkzltch!")

But there's another reason for this "feature" - the real reason why good ole' Uncle Google implemented the feature in the first place. But to explain it, I may have to get a little technical. Therefore, please note the following warning:

WARNING: THE U.S. SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED, WHILE TAKING A SHORT BREAK FROM MESSING AROUND WITH THE WORDING OF CIGARETTE AND LIQUOR LABEL WARNINGS, THAT THE U.S. SURGEON GENERAL IS NOT LIKELY TO GET A RAISE UNLESS THE U.S. SURGEON GENERAL BRANCHES OUT AND STARTS DOING WARNINGS FOR OTHER PRODUCTS AS WELL. THEREFORE, THE U.S. SURGEON GENERAL HAS DECIDED TO EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING EXPLANATION, AND HAS DETERMINED THAT IT MAY CONTAIN SOME COMPLICATED TECHNOLOGICAL TERMS, AND SHOULD NOT BE READ BY UNTRAINED PERSONNEL WHILE OPERATING HEAVY MACHINERY UNLESS THEY ARE WEARING A FULL-BODY BIOHAZARD SUIT. THANK YOU.

Still with me? Good. Sorry, I just had to shake off those losers who get scared of big, scary, technical terms like "garden hose". Now, let's get down to business. The reason for the security measure is to prevent "comment spam". You may recognize the term "spam", which generally refers to the wonderful email messages you often get from kind-hearted strangers who are genuinely concerned with your well-being, and who generously offer to refinance your home for just %0.7, or give you the opportunity to earn $650,000 a year by working from home for only 17 minutes a week. (See, who said strangers aren't kind people?) However, in recent years, these people have decided that they're not doing enough for the good of humanity, and they need to branch out and expand their kind humanitarian work to other venues as well.

So some brilliant "philanthropist" hit upon the idea of using blog comments as a new medium for propagating their "services". Posting a blog comment is a form of communication that anyone can engage in without any qualifications whatsoever - even being human is not required. A computer program - called a "script" - can be written, which can post dozens, if not hundreds, of comments to someone's blog, all of them promoting "useful" services such as online casinos where your odds of winning are about as good as those of a duck in an industrial trash compactor, or other such services which the world would be a truly grim place without. Hence the term "comment spam" - it's like ordinary email spam, except it targets the comments sections of blogs instead of electronic mailboxes.

However, there's one teensy weensy flaw in the spammers' line of reasoning: the general population is simply not quite interested in hearing about these "services" on a constant basis, even less than they are in dealing with telemarketers. Specifically, the average member of the general population would not be opposed to legalizing the shooting of spammers with incendiary rocket-propelled grenades for sport. However, some pesky little outfit calling itself the "Government" does not allow people to engage in such fulfilling pursuits, and thus people have to engage in a more pacifistic approach: Self-defense - attempting to block spam from reaching them in the first place.

So that's where the "retype these weird letters" business comes into the picture: it's an anti-spam security measure. See, for a human being or similar creature (such as a tort lawyer) who is posting a legitimate comment, it's not such a big deal to copy the letters over. However, an automated script attempting to mass-post tons of spam will be prevented in doing so, since most scripts have not graduated the first grade, and thus cannot read.

Since some of my readers have indicated that they feel such security measures are a major pain in the neck, I'm thinking of disabling it. But if I do, keep the following in mind: if you see any advertisements or the like down there in the comments section, DO NOT follow the links they provide - I do not endorse them, and never will. Anybody I endorse - such as Paskesz Candy, which makes the greatest kosher candy in the world - will be mentioned up here, in MY part of the blog. Do NOT follow any links that spammers may post downstairs, in the public part of the blog. (Did I mention that I wholeheartedly endorse Paskesz Candy?)

I hope to disable the feature as soon as I gain access to an ordinary computer. Believe it or not, every single one of my posts since "Touchdown!" has been composed entirely on my phone, using its little three-and-a-half inch slide-out keyboard, and posted through Cellcom's GPRS network. But there is only so much a little phone can do: I cannot change most blog settings from my phone, and thus need to do so from a full-size computer. But once I do, I hope more people will be encouraged to comment on my writing - I really appreciate the feedback very much.

But if and when spam starts appearing on my blog, I will have to re-enable the security feature. I'm sorry, but it's the only easy - yet effective - method of preventing spam. Well, at least until the script writers learn to speak Czechoslovakian.

EDIT: The word verification feature has been disabled. Have fun!