Spam Karma is indeed a rather complex plugin. The problem however for anyone programming such a plugin is that complexity is very hard to avoid. I myself created Pivot-Blacklist which is Pivot’s premier anti-spam suite. It contains a slew of anti-spam techniques. In the beginning it was very easy to use but as spammers got nastier and more techniques were required to stay spam-free the plugin got more complex. This is something a programmer can hardly prevent from happening. I’ve checked out Spam Karma and it’s extremely impressive!
HashCash is becoming a dead end. I’ve heard there’s a thing called BlogSubmitter Pro or something that uses an actual html/javascript engine to parse and execute any code your front-end may have. It will calculate the hashcash just fine. This will probably also confuse Bad Behaviour because it now doesn’t simulate a browser anymore, it IS a browser!
Us anti-spam fighters are quickly running out of options here I’m afraid. There are some things left that still work but blacklists, javascript solutions and bad behaviour are probably not going to help much anymore in the future I’m afraid.
