how do I stop this?

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Helios_Multi TPoxygen11final

[farmerswife]

I woke this morning to 10 new comments spread out over my blog posts..all were spam messages.  This type of thing really makes me wonder why I am blogging and happy that I don't post personal details and photos online, but what can I do to stop this kind of thing?

I am using blogger, and am not sure what settings to change to make it harder for this to occur?  Any ideas?  I am going to have a look at my settings now, I don't want to make my blog private as I am building it up, but this worrys me.

[CrystalsQuest]

Three main tips:

• Comment settings in blogger - setting it to use CAPTCHA, where the commenter has to type in the words/numbers embedded in a picture - will help reduce the automatic software generated comment spam
  
• Moderated comments - while your blog is still small enough, you can choose to approve comments before they get published.  It adds a bit of time to your workload, but stops a lot of the human comment spam, especially if you announce that comments are moderated on the form or somewhere people will see it before they submit.
  
• Plug ins.  Akismet is a well known plug in to prevent comment spam on both blogger and wordpress.  I've been using wordpress for a long time now so I don't know what other ones are compatible with blogger, but there should be some for you.

Good luck.
PS You may also want to set your comments to have 'nofollow' attribute. That means the links posted in comments don't add to google's ranking of the site they're pointing to (it doesn't affect yours).  Most spammers look for blogs where they get credit for those links, and by changing it you become less attractive to spam.  On the other hand, it also makes it less attractive for other bloggers to share the love, so it's a personal decision.

[farmerswife]

I like the idea of Akismet, can you use it on blogger as well as wordpress, as I have blogger?

[stextc]

I like the idea of Akismet, can you use it on blogger as well as wordpress, as I have blogger?

Not sure if you can use it for blogger as it's a wordpress plug in.

[CrystalsQuest]

Yes, there's a blogger version.  At least according to their site.  I've not used it personally...