This is how I reduced Spam messages on my sites by 98%. The 2% is left to human Spam. I handled that by moderating each message on my comment waiting list. At least I still have the time to do that for now.

The last thing I should be doing is complain about the traffic that my site is having. Traffic is what I have desired and worked for. It?is the reason I write new posts often and optimize my site for Search Engines. So I am not complaining about legitimate traffic but fake ones through Spam.

Spam messages coupled with my new SEO strategy almost knocked my site off-line last month except for prompt measures put in place at the right time to avert such an occurrence.

What is Spamming?

The act of Spamming is the use of electronic messaging system to send unsolicited messages (Spam) especially advertising. In my case, my site was flooded with fake comments on articles and posts every day for one full month. I am talking about 1000 to 3000 comments per day.

That’s the kind that brings down a site altogether.

Everything has been taken care of.

Ok. This is what I did.

How Spam was knocked out..

Firstly, I installed Akismet plugin and activated it across my sites. The plugin is very effective. Over a thousand Spam messages were hijacked and stored into its vaults. That means, I had nothing to read through and delete or either mark as Spam. The plugin simply trapped the spam messages as soon as they were detected.

Secondly, I installed and activated Hashcash.IO Integration plugin. Though the spam messages were detected and trapped by Akismet, the huge amount of hits on my site per day was taking a tore on my database and consuming the CPU allocation for my hosting.

Hashcash.IO installs a simple padlock beside each login or comment page which the user has to click to activate. While a user activates the send button, in the process the browser solves some mathematical questions to verify if the user is a bot or a real person before the send button would be made active.

Hashcash.IO Integration silently verifies a user without asking them write out funny looking text on the computer screen.

Lastly, I activated CloudFlare on my hosting cPanel and routed my site’s traffic through their savers. I changed my security level from Medium to High, ?identified and blacklisted notorious IPs that drove unrealistic traffic to my site.

That was how I knocked out this ugly monster Spam messages.

Share your thoughts on Spam

Do you own a site? What method do you use in?tackling Spam messages?

Leave your comment below.