Resolved comment spam still coming in despite ReCaptcha

For people who are continuing to get comment spam, after having installed ReCaptcha on WordPress … I can report that I’ve now taken action that has resulted in comment spam going down to zero.

While ReCaptcha was working as designed, it seemed as though the spammers were accessing wp-comments-post.php directly, so that they never saw the Recaptcha. There was some debate about this as a weakness in the WordPress design, and I had a few spammers get through every day, generating more e-mail for me to handle.

I found the solution to Deny Access to No Referrer Requests, as written up at https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Combating_Comment_Spam/Denying_Access#Deny_Access_to_No_Referrer_Requests . Over the past week, I haven’t had to handle any comment spam.

I can’t foresee if this is a permanent fix — spammers can be ingenious — but at least for now, I’ve reduced my administration work on WordPress.