What Would Bill Gates Do?

[steepholm]

They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers.
But what’s the real cost?
‘Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper. (The Flight of the Conchords)


I mentioned recently that spam had forced me to put CAPTCHA on anonymous comments. Both dorianegray and owlfish reported that doing this hadn't stemmed the spamflow for them, and I've got to say that it hasn't worked for me either, so far. I'll stick with it a little longer, but if CAPTCHA plus reporting to LJ don't work, I'll have to consider banning anonymous comments altogether. There are only so many adverts for cheap Ugg boots that I can take.

What intrigues me is, how are they getting around CAPTCHA? Is someone laboriously typing in the two-word phrase each time? According to Wikipedia, the answer is yes:

Spammers pay about $0.80 to $1.20 for each 1,000 solved CAPTCHAs to companies employing human solvers in Bangladesh, China, India, and many other developing nations. Other sources cite a cost as low as $0.50 for each 1,000 solved.

Even at those low rates of pay, though, it's hard to make sense of the economics. On LJ, for example, many people (including me) screen anonymous comments, and delete spam before it's seen by anyone. And of those few that make it into a comment thread, the number that result in someone clicking through to a site for Viagra or Uggs and actually making a purchase must be vanishingly small. Spam works because it's possible to send a million messages with the click of a button, but if sending a million messages actually costs $500 in CAPTCHA decoding, surely that's going to make it uneconomic?

On the other hand, if by having CAPTCHA I'm helping to eat into the profits of spammers, and even helping to employ people in developing countries, perhaps I should put up with it, in the same spirit that I do Free Rice puzzles when I'm on hold?

Data point: I've received two spam comments in the time it's taken to write this post.

Comments

[jemck.livejournal.com]

I disabled anonymous comments a while ago, as so many folk told me it was the only way to foil the spammers. A shame.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm reluctant to do it, but...

[larryhammer]

FWIW, the day after turning on CAPTCHAs, I went from 13 to 2 spam comments overnight. That 13 is down from a high of 24 a couple days before, so it's possible it was simply the trough of a wave. We'll see what happens over the next week.

---L.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I haven't been keeping statistics, but my impression is that it made no appreciable difference. Of course, that could be an illusion born of my growing irritation.

[larryhammer]

I can be an obsessive counter sometimes.

---L.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

I have bean an obsessive counter... (I feel like I ought to apologise for that one)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, you're among friends here, or at least fellow sufferers. (We're the only ones who really understand.)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

It didn't help me either. Though what you report here seems incredible.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'll be very interested to hear if there is any alternative explanation to manual input.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

On the other other hand, deleting all those spam comments is wasting your time, which also has an economic value. If you'd like to channel some of your salary towards supporting people in developing countries, there are more constructive (and less annoying!) ways to do it.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

This is very true! In fact I don't really need to delete them. They can sit happily in my gmail folder (always expanding, like the universe) and on the LJ servers (they don't seem to care), and no one's worse off. But I do delete them, of course.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, so do I. I don't get very many, because I have banned anonymous commenting (though I did it more to deter trolls than spammers), but it still feels untidy to leave them undeleted on my journal.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

But what about wasting the time of legitimate readers who would like to be making constructive comments, who are instead having to spend their spoons guessing at ambiguous captchas?

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Yeah but captcha/recaptcha's are social goods, since they help digitize hard to search texts.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

But is that the kind that LJ actually offers? Some of the distorted words look like real scan faults, but others look like they're designed to be ambiguous.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I have heard that the spammers supply a porn front-end; people get to see porn if they solve the captchas, so all the spammers have to do is have some porn they can make available.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Okay, that sort of makes sense. Although, porn is hardly difficult to come across on the internet (or so I've heard) should one wish to see it.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I turned on captcha a few days ago. I am now locking certain old posts that seem to attract the most crap. Next step, forbidding anonymous comments.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good idea for old posts. Unfortunately, this post has already had its first bit of anonymous spam!

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I find it impossible to solve Captchas first time (are they meant to be real words? is it case sensitive?). Need to get me an Indian solver.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I have heard of people in such countries being employed to put shredded documents back together.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they'd help me find my TV remote? It went missing the day I found my bookcase key. (Are my household gods trying to take my cultural life in hand?)

[photolallia2012.livejournal.com]

I just screen the anonymous comments. Nobody sees them but me and I usually don't mind.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm just a little too neurotic to leave them alone!