Interesting Observations

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Clever Comment Spammers

Comment Spammers

I have been slow in posting but I regularly moderate comments and delete the spams but lately it has become more and more difficult to distinguish them from legitimate comments.

Following is a sample of what these scum bags have been writing and I just deleted almost 200+ comments that were left on different posts just today!    Reviewing such huge numbers of spam comments is a nightmare and it is possible to delete genuine comments accidentally but I hope I haven’t done that.

Here are some of them:

“great pictures, Especially for me at this winter time ,I am so in love with hot countries,Very peaceful!”

“Wow! this is a really nice blog. I loved reading it.
Thanks!”

“Nice info you have here..
I’ll use this a lot..thanks
and nice site too :D
“Good Afternoon…! ”
“Great Forum & Community!
I’ve been here as a freeloader for a while and finally got around to registration.
I sorta live online – spend most of my days addicted to social sites like MySpace.com and gambling sites like Betot.com.
Besides gambling (this week I made a sweet $2,000) off of betot, I love sports and hiking.
So that’s my self introduction. Happy New Year to All and hope to get to know you all better…
Peace…”

“The concept of holistic health is not new,but it was the first time I am listening to. Medicine is more an approach to how individuals should be treated, as opposed to a treatment method.”

“Howdy Partner, I fell lucky that I located this post while browsing for spyware doctor 3. I am with you on the topic of e going gets tough, tough feels like quitting |. Ironically, I was just putting a lot of thought into this last Thursday.”

“I think your blog need a new wordpress template. Downalod it from http:// genericwpthemes. com . The site has nice and unique wordpress templates.”

“I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…”

“What if you are on someone else’s computer say, durning a hurricane evacuation. They dont tell you that have that type of spyware parents use to monitor the pre-teen kids and weeks after you leave, they go into your acocunt and go over all your entries? Is that wrong (ehtically it IS..I mean legally)?    Just asking because my paranoid aunt (erm..uncle’s wife) made my uncle go onto his computer and hell pulled up and printed every journal entry (including somebad ones about her…note – she’s a racist and I complained about it) on a site that you have to be a member of to read the entries, see member pages, etc.. (yes, I changed the passwords on ALL my frequently visited sites) and yes, after going to ther sites on their compy durning the Hurricane Ike evac, I clicked “Tools – Delete Browser History – Delete All” and they still got in…and the passwords were hard and in l33t.)”

HUH?  That last comment really got me thinking..   Is this person really a spammer or they were trying to make a point but I didn’t get it?   This was on the post When the going gets tough, tough feels like quitting
photo: dnorman

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52 comments
Samir

I think I’ve mentioned this in a comment on your site before, but a majority of these problems are solved for me by using the Spam Karma plugin.

I don’t use Akismet, but if I’m not mistaken, it depends on the content of the comment to judge its validity. The great thing about Spam Karma that it uses other tests as well, which are only possible because the script resides on your own site.

For example, it counts how long it takes after a page is loaded for the comment to be posted. Most automated spammers use “robots” to post the comment, which means that time ends up being 2-3 seconds. A normal human being obviously can’t read a post and put up a comment in that time, so it marks it as spam. It also tests whether the browser has Javascript enabled and a bunch of other things.

I have found it to be quite effective. It can obviously still be fooled by an actual human being coming to the site and posting a real comment with a single link in it, for example. I get this sort of spam occasiionally … mostly some of my own dumb countrymen trying to sell their supposedly high-class high-tech IT companies and services (how that is supposed to work, I have no clue). I usually delete these comments, but if they have actually said something that’s vaguely relevant I keep the comment and delete the link. As the webmaster, that is your perogative.

Spam is not going away anytime soon, so I guess we each just need to come up with our own ways of dealing with it.

Samir

Samirs last blog post..Twitterpated With Twitter

laketrees

lol Pearl
great pic and I can so relate…
spammers are getting harder to suss out !!! grrr
I usually have to follow the link to double check if they are genuine …
the ones that copy other bloggers comments are easy to delete though….
it is a pain and I agree very time consuming having to check them out

laketreess last blog post..Top Dropper Day

Adam

I like the ones that take an old comment that I made and rewrite it as if it was their own comment.

Spam Karma sounds like a good pluggin, I might have to give that one a try.
If I find myself getting a ton of comments from bots, I will enable the captcha until they drop me from their list, then I disable it…really hate to make people use those things.

Adams last blog post..10 Reasons to go Dofollow

Mihaela Lica

Ha! I got all of these too, but what disturbed me the most was the one with WordPress templates. I even checked their site and I found the most horrible WordPress themes you can think off: poor coding, ugly layouts.

The “great post, mate” type of comments are a constant presence and what really annoys me is that, despite my clear comments policy (I am talking about eWritings) they still put their keywords in the signature link. I don’t even bother approving or delinking such comments anymore. I send them straight to spam, despite the message they convey.

Mihaela Licas last blog post..GroundFloor Media to Represent Bellco Credit Union

Mihaela Lica

LOL, did you see the comment to this entry from “logo design contest”? They got the message all right.

Mihaela Licas last blog post..GroundFloor Media to Represent Bellco Credit Union

Pearl

@Mark – I’ve never thought of googling spam comments but that’ll waste more of our time and I wouldn’t want spammers to have fun at our expense! they must die! ;)

@logo design: thanks and I’d love to hear from you on what else we can do to get rid of them…

@Global Patriot: I’ve been distracted off late but will take care of it soon as I love my blog and cannot let these guys have fun at it’s expense.. thanks for stopping by Mark..

@Samir: Are you tired of seeing my spam rant? :) I remember you mentioned Spam Karma and I even looked for it on wordpress codex but couldn’t find it. Googled it and found it but haven’t installed it yet and will do it before the end of the day today! Your own dumb countrymen? How rude!! :P Actually I get a lot of spam from your countrymen too, I’d refrain from calling them dumb though :) they are all dumb spammers!!

@Kim: I loved this picture and totally get it.. I do check them out too before deleting but it’s become very time consuming and lot of times it’s someone’s niche site that they want to get a link back to but still, the comment has to make some sense and has to be relevant – I’m thinking of making this site nofollow for a while and see what happens

@Adam: Like people above said, spammers are lazy, dumb and stupid! What dyu mean ‘until they drop me from their list’? you mean readers? I’m also afraid of that but we’ll have to see how this plays out

@Mig: I hope he (the logo guy) lets his friends know too :) I’m going to be a bit stern with them too and start deleting them now!

Pearls last blog post..Clever Comment Spammers

Lord Matt

I use a three fold approach.

1. I feel completely free to remove anything I don’t like.
2. I feel completely free to remove anything where the link leads to a spammy feeling site (say a landing page).
3. I feel completely free to remove off topic comments.

As an add on to #2 I will sometimes remove the link if the comment was good.

That works for me but I also have a lower count of comments even being a naturally do-follow blog.

Lord Matts last blog post..The .TEL landrush is about to start

pet snakes

I’ve gone to moderating comments before they appear on my blogs. I used to just handle them once every few days and delete as needed, but lately spam has gotten so bad, and like you’ve pointed out hard to recognize, that it’s easier just to set aside 20 or 30 minutes a day to moderate them.

Lots of times someone will leave a legitimate looking comment having to do with the topic but with a spammy link. In that case I’ll keep the comment and remove any links/mention of domain names. We all know more comments mean more “life” on a blog so why not keep what I can?

Adam

Quite some time ago, I was receiving about 10 to 20 spam comments an hour, which kept getting by the spam filter. In response I activated the Captcha. After about a week, the comments ceased and I deactivated the captcha.
When I activated the captcha, I also wrote a little explanation and let the regular visitors that I would be deactivating once the spam attack ceased.

Adams last blog post..10 Reasons to go Dofollow

Airsoft

I got a lot of spam on my blog before I activated Akismet, but some of the kind you mentioned in your post still get through. I agree, spam can be hard to decipher, but you shouldn’t spend so much time on it. If something seems overtly sensible and such, I think it should be kept. I think some of my posts might have been deleted in your crusade, though. Just because I have a keyword name doesn’t mean I’m a spammer! Behind this name I am a human with feelings, and they have been hurt. I’m just kidding.