PG has been receiving quite a lot of comment spam attempts lately. His back-end collects most, but more than a few have been getting through and have to be manually moderated by PG in the past several weeks.
PG tweaked his comment spam blocker earlier today, but may have made it too difficult according to one visitor. After reading the visitor’s concerns, PG just dialed the settings back a bit.
If anyone has comments on PG’s comment spam blocker (Akismet), please feel free to leave them in the comments or send PG a private message via the Contact PG link at the top of the blog.
reCAPTCHA is a product (Google) distinct from Akismet (Automattic). Both are spam filters, but reCAPTCHA does the challenge / response on the front end, while Akismet runs in the background at the server.
I’m assuming you use one of the WP plugins to integrate the reCAPTCHA. It might or might not help to look into one that uses reCAPTCHA V3 rather than V2 – V3 uses a “scoring” system to block garbage while skipping the challenge for “high score” posters. (It apparently does take some time for it to “train in,” however, as it watches your site.)
I’ve been flooded by spam on my email the past few months. Not fun.
They’ve found a way to get past the usual filters.
I was wondering about the Captcha.
No biggie.