Have you noticed an increase in comment spam over the last couple of months?
And the comment spammers are getting cleverer too.
It used to be easy to spot comment spam. Usually it was made up of a lot of porn or medical related keywords and a bunch of links. That was good because it was easy for the spam filters like Akismet (on WordPress blogs) to spot it and trash it.
But today’s comment spammers seem to be a lot more subtle.
I find a lot of comments that at first glance look almost genuine. But when you look a little closer you can recognise that they’re not.
What does this comment spam look like?
- Well first of all it is a ‘proper’ comment, not just a bunch of keywords.
- Also they don’t put links into the body of the comment so that your spam filter will smack them down.
- When you read the comment you realise that it is very generic and doesn’t relate to your post in any real way. Often they ask you a question that makes it pretty clear that they haven’t looked at your post.
- And if your check the URL that they supply with the comment, you’ll find that it leads to some site that sells product like cell phones or medical supplies or on-line dating (they were the three comment spammers in my mail this morning).
- Or else it’s a site that’s packed with advertising, in the expectation that you’ll click on something there if they can just get you to come to their site. They’re even harder to spot.
And by the way, don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with advertising on blogs or web sites. Apart from the income stream, at can actually provide a service for your readers if it’s not overdone. Heavens, you can see that I have advertising on Scraps of Mind and I don’t think that it’s off-putting for readers.
Is it any wonder that we have all that paranoid captcha software on our blogs to help moderate the comments. I have my Akismet set to have me moderate any comments from someone who has not commented on Scraps of Mind before. So the first time you comment I need to approve it. But every time after that you are recognised as a friend and your comment goes straight through.
I prefer to spend the time moderating that way than have my site flooded with meaningless comments from people who just want you to click on their link and visit their site.
It doesn’t always work and sometimes a disguised comment spammer will slip through the net, but I can’t become paranoid about this. It would take all the fun out of blogging. Even so, I refuse to let Scraps of Mind become a dumping ground for links for these people.
Have you experienced comment spammers?
What’s your techniques and tactics for dealing with them?
I suspect that there’s not much else that I can do. And this is just a sad side effect of Internet life.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Comment spam is a royal pain. The way I deal with it is to keep all comments moderated so my readers don’t have to read the nonsense. After a round of comment spam that hit all 5 of my blogs on multiple occasions always the same comment, I took action by complaining to their ISP then I poked a bit of fun at them in my last post. If more folks went to always moderating their comments instead of letting every comment through the spammers would see the blogosphere dry up as far as an audience for their spam.
PS. I won’t leave my url on here but will contact you privately so you can read the entry if I see your contact info. I don’t want to give other spammers that my blogs are fair game!
Oh, how the spammers annoy me! I just ranted about it a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t moderate comments but I do have the captcha to slow some of them down at least. They are getting smarter and leaving comments without links lately, I’ve noticed it too.
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When I was over at Wordpress I noticed that I got a lot of spam comments filtered with Akismet. Now that I have moved to Blogger, I haven’t really noticed a lot of spam, but it could be because, having moved my blog, it’s still new enough to not be on the radar as much. Thank goodness for small things.
Spammers suck!
I actually tookm the time to read some of my spam. it was poetry, random sentences tied together with medical words. it was like the script for lord of the rings. beautiful, and it was written by a computer??
I agree that some spam is really hard to spot. I use Spam Karma (for some reason Akismet won’t email me the comments…) and I’ve got it set to moderate any comment left on a post older than a month. Comment spammers seem to target older posts on my blog for some reason so this means that they do get moderated.
Well comment spammers obviously seem to get up the nose of most bloggers. And most of us have some sort of moderating system to try to combat them. I guess all we can do is grin and bear it if we want to keep on blogging.
I’m just starting to notice it more and more. If it continues to pick up, I’ll put moderation on.
Once it starts, it seems to grow, Elizabeth. You might find yourself having to put some moderation in sooner than you expected now that the spammers have found you.
If you are so worried about comment spammers, why don’t you disable url altogether? Wouldn’t that make more sense than to write an article to complain. I rather have link spammers in my comments than posts that say, “Great post!!!” To address your last bullet about comment spammers, you have a lot of ads on the sidebar yourself.