Defensio WordPress Anti-Spam Plugin

I’m sure, there are some user who would like to have spam comments removed from their blog. I’ve written about reCAPTCHA WordPress plugin recently, used by many bloggers to prevent spam comments and spam feedback. It can be implemented in any php based website to control abuse from automated programs usually written to generate spam.

But there are other form of spam like trackback. A few moments ago, I received three comments notifcation for a post I made a couple of week ago. The comments are turned out to be spam, all come from the same IP. These poor quality made blogs are scrapers or ‘sploggers’.

What Is blog Scraping Or Sploggers?

Is the process where automated software scans hundreds of thousands of blogs per day, searching for and copying content.  These are some blog posts which should counts as trackbacks but they are all coming from the same IP.

Defensio Spam Block

To help prevent comment and trackback spam first hitting my blog I used a spam blocker called “Defensio“. The new plugin is attempting to improve on the standard set by Automattic’s Akismet, the default blocker for WordPress.

Compared to Akismet, Defensio is able to sort your spam comments, don’t chronologically but according to how likely it thinks the comments are indeed spam, listing the least likely comments on top.

How Does It Install

Defensio’s requires very little installation: I signed up for my account and started poking around the site. It’s free to sign up. Note that when you sign up, you’ll specify a website or weblog that you plan use defensio.

Once made it, Download the zip file. (Requires WordPress 2.1 or newer) and Unzip the Defensio folder into your WordPress wp-content/plugins directory. Activate the plugin on the Options | Plugins Management page of your WordPress admin site.

Pretty smooth so far…, so you return to the Plugins tab in your control panel and activate Defensio. In order to use their service, you will need a free Defensio API key.

Interface

How you can see from the image below, my installation of Defensio has caught 6099 between spam comment and spam feedback. Also I also checked that Defensio’s can work  simultaneously with my current reCAPTCHA plugin to assure this blog is not attacked so often from comments and trackbaks.

Recently was released Defensio anti spam plugin version 1.1.3 for WordPress that fixes the broken link issue in the WordPress admin dashboard activity area. Its Defensio user interface make ensure that spam have never been as easy to manage. This also make it really easy to check RSS spam on my blog without every day log into my blog directly. What do you think of this plugin? What is your opinion?