Spam Protector Plugins?

[gwilsonmail]

There are 3 Spam Protector plugins -

Spam Protector (RBL)
Will reject comments made from hosts which are listed in RBLs. Pay attention that this may affect proxy-users or dial-up users.
Author: Sebastian Nohn; version: 1.0

Spam Protector (SURBL)
Reject comments that containt blacklisted URLs
Author: Sebastian Nohn; version: 1.0

Spam Protector
A variety of methods to prevent comment spam
Author: Garvin Hicking, Sebastian Nohn; version: 1.22

Are all three required?

Once installed do they function automatically or do they need to be updated from time-to-time?

[garvinhicking]

None of the three are really required.

The most important of them is the bundled spamprotector plugin. In the past it has not been updated that often and works solid, which is why we still keep it in the bundled distribution and didn't yet outsource it to Spartacus (were fast updates are easier to spread)

When using the spamblock plugin you might want to adjust your list of filtered authors/URLs from time to time, as spammers tend to use different ones from time to time.

The other two plugins you mention are very effective and centralized, but also include the risk thatyou filter false positives. The plugins work based on blacklists and are thus self-maintaining. Personally I don't use them because of the risk of filtering dialup-users. On the other hand it has proven very effective on well-known spamrelays, and it updates on its own if a new IP is massively spamming blogs. If you didn't have that one you would need to manually adjust the filters of the spamblock (only if you're not running some kind of auto-moderation).

HTH,
Garvin