Thou shalt not suffer a spammer to visit: more severe punishment for blog-spam
Right now, when someone posts comment-spam to a blog and it is identified as such, their IP is blacklisted, so that blog and any other blogs that share a blacklist with that blog no longer accept comments from that IP. Whoop-de-doo. This isn’t working. If a spammer can’t post to blog A, B, or C, it just ignores those and posts to blogs D through Z. The punishment doesn’t deter them at all.
When an IP has been blacklisted by a given number of blogs, why not disallow that IP from visiting any sites at all that you control? Have a server-level check of the RBL or whatever, and instead of serving them the page they requested, redirect them to a malware-removal tool that they can run to remove spamware from their system.
“Hey, looks like your computer’s been sending spam. If you’re doing it on purpose, go die, jerk. If not, download and run this handy tool to remove the spam-sending application from your computer. And while you’re at it, run this free antivirus and install this firewall.”
Sure, blocking a spamming IP means one fewer hit to your site, and if you have advertisers that could translate into fewer ad dollars. But that hit isn’t necessarily a consumer’s eyeballs, anyway, right? It’s probably just the spamware.
Obviously there would be complications. The tool would have to generate a code to prove that it’s been run on the system before the IP would be un-blacklisted, or something. But if it could be done in a sensible and workable way, this could really change things.
