To Be Human

Sounds like this is going to be some big philosophical, theological discussion of what it means to be a person versus animal, whet humanity is coming to, and all that good, deep stuff, doesn't it? Well, you should know better, because it's not. It's about an old, familiar problem- SPAM. And no, not the fake meat product that no one ever admits to eating. To be technical- you don't want it, you didn't ask for it, and yet, it keeps on coming.

Spam isn't a new problem, for me or likely anyone else. I have a Hotmail account that I spend more time on killing friendly messages such as, "Hey, you've won a free $100 restaurant gift card!" (No, I haven't) or, "Your AFC bank account has been breached so click this link and enter your passwords and we'll take care of it for you!" (Nice try, guys, but I've never even heard of AFC bank); than getting actual messages. And when you push the "Next blog" button, you get blogs driven by machines offering cheap deals on cell phones, with a human far far off in the distance hoping someone will fall for it.

That sort of thing, I'm used to. But when they invade MY turf, I get mad. I didn't painstakingly build this thing to end up with comments such as, "I agree with your post, hey check this out, I think you're gonna like it!" Not sure how you can not agree with a post about penguins, but I digress. This is when I decide to do something. The question is, what?

I debated disabling anonymous commenting, but several of my readers don't have Blogger accounts. I created a fake account they could use to sign in on, but that seemed like too much work. And I believe in allowing anonymous comments- if you want to voice your opinion but don't have the courage to use your name, or if you want to play Linky-Do, or whatever, fine. I won't be the curtail your free speech, I believe in expressing your opinion even if it's one I don't necessarily like. But I was so frustrated , I went to the settings to do just that- and then I saw an alternative.

I got so excited about this alternative- word verification- that I went around like Rambo Woman yesterday, suggesting it on every random blog I saw that had been hit by the Spammers. And if you don't know how to do it, I already sent Darlene a tutorial, and who am I to try to beat my own words? Requiring commenters to verify a word works because the spammers are automated, and it takes a human to type in some letters they see. Plus, a lot of the spammers have caught on and aren't anonymous anymore, as I discovered playing Rambo. So until they get smarter than this, you're going to have to type in a few letters- a pretty small price to pay for my sanity. At least, I think so.