Man of the year: Dr Dave, the Unknown Genius
Yup, I’m going to nominate a Man of the Year (if Time magazine can do it, so can I). And he is: Dr Dave, a card carrying Evil Genius, creator of Spam Karma, the software that protects this blog from spammers and scammers.
It’s not really the man (as I don’t know him and have never met him) but the fact that his blog is humorous and, occasionally, interesting and, most importantly, the Wordpress module that he created: ‘Spam Karma 2′ is an incredibly effective means of comment spam control.
Last time I looked, Spam Karma had blocked more than 10,000 spam comments to this blog (see the current total at the bottom of the page). I don’t remember quite when I installed it, possibly around Oct 2005, so that is 10,000 in about 14 months, which is, er, 700 a month, or around 25 a day. In fact the amount of spam comments had leapt dramatically in the last six months, so a typical average at present is about 30-40 a day. One day I noticed 120 attempts in a 24 hours period.
And as far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a single false positive and very few false negatives, which is quite remarkable in the anti-spam world.
It’s a pity that the same effect can’t be found in the world of email spam, but it is a different ball-game there. Email spam is a bit like throwing junk over the garden wall whereas blog spam involves a little more interaction, which gives us a much better chance of catching the buggers before they can plant the spam.