Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send — most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
There are two main types of spam, and they have different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Usenet spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at “lurkers”, people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts. Furthermore, Usenet spam subverts the ability of system administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their systems.
Spam is one of the biggest issues to deal with for all webmasters. Spam can not only be annoying but also dangerous at times. Most new bloggers may not have to worry about spam as long as they have Akismet or similar solutions installed. But as soon as your website becomes popular, new challenges arise. These 10 anti-spam plugins for WordPress can help you tackle those issues:
Akismet
A great plugin for beginners and advanced users. In fact, you should not go live with your blog without having this plugin (or an alternative) turned on.
WP-reCAPTCHA
CAPTCHA can’t stop all spam comments and registrations. At the same time, it can make life difficult for spammers who want to mess with your website.
AVH First Defense Against Spam
Checks comments before they are posted to your website and blocks spammers before they can do any harm.
Fast Secure Contact Form
So you thought your e-mail account would be safe against spammers when you used a contact form plugin? That is simply not true. This plugin lets you protect your forms and contact page against spammers.
Bad Behavior
A powerful plugin that could limit access to your site for spammers and keep robots and junk content away from your WordPress site.
CryptX
If you are sharing your e-mail and others’ emails on your website, you want to install this plugin to keep those addresses hidden from e-mail scrappers.
AntiVirus
Spam injections and viruses are very nasty and hard to deal with for webmasters. This plugin can help you reduce the chances of your website getting infected.
Anti Feed-Scraper
Content theft is a big issue these days. Some people don’t seem to have too many issues using other people’s works to their advantage. With this plugin, you can stop feed scrapers.
Stop Spammer Registrations Plugin
Those of you who have owned a WordPress membership site in the past are familiar with this issue. Spam accounts are annoying and sometimes dangerous. This plugin can help you reduce their numbers. It checks emails, username, and IP against an online database before users can register.
User Spam Remover
Sometimes people create junk accounts on your website and don’t use them for a while until their chance comes. This plugin lets you remove those annoying accounts fast.