For Those About To Spam, I Salute You!
I have to admit, I have a Love/Hate relationship with spammers on my blog:
- I Hate the time and effort that goes to waste to deal with them
- I Love the inspiration they provide me with to constantly evolve the methods of dealing with them and also Content I create on the topic
It seems that no matter how solid of a protection we put in place – it only works for a while and then we begin to see an influx of comments filled with bunch of BS that supposed to make me “feel good and approve their crap”.
Think again!
I consider comment spam a “low level” attack on my blog, as I have described in my post Triple “P” Of Total WordPress Security. While there is still quite a bit of Spam Bot activity – I see an ever increasing amount of human generated spam.
It seems that outsourcing comment spam becomes quite popular option and it is no longer limited to Internet Marketing niche and standard adult sites and pills, as I seen it before. I see it now used for just about anything that could be sold on internet and every time I look up the IP range where this comment comes from – it clearly indicates third world countries where labor is cheap.
And So I say, using the variation of well known phrase:
For Those About To Spam, I Salute You!
To me this is a battle, it is personal and I’m getting quite good and quick on pushing that “SPAM” button. I will continue to improve the automation and share it with my readers to help others beat your idiotic efforts.
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Amen Brother. Have been ranting on this topic regularly and always looking for the fine line between making it hard for the real people to add comments and eliminating the cretins.
MikePaetzold´s last blog ..3 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog From The Search Engines
I hear you Mike, it is a battle that will never end but as long as we can keep an upper hand in it – its part of the game!
What have you found the best way to deal with spammers? A blog plugin? I run 3 blogs and get upwards of 20 spam comments a day. Its gotten to the point where I just dont read them and delete them all which is a real shame as there are probably some really interesting comments and opinions mixed in with all that spam
Nigel,
Search for “comment spam” on this blog and you will find a few posts where I detail my own processes for dealing with them.
Thanks spotter did a search and found some interesting ideas
Alex, you always lead the way. Spam of any kind is such a drain. I spend a good 45 minutes each day dumping my junk folder in email. After I review it quickly for anything that’s important, it’s straight to the delete button.
And it’s getting to be the same with the blog. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell sometimes if the comments are SPAM or real. But frankly, if it’s not specific, I delete it.
I don’t want to be taken advantage of. Thanks for bringing this up and continuing to fight it.
David
Thanks David!
I know what you mean, perhaps next time I will add some stats for SPAM vs HAM on this blog next time. It is staggering difference!
Try to install captcha on your blog. This will help minimize the spam comments especially those that came from bots.:)
Vince´s last blog ..Calm- Cool and Collected
I just did – but simpler version. I don’t like captcha due to difficulty it presents to people.
David, for email spam I have found MailWasherPro very helpful in cutting down the time I was spending searching through my daily messages for the good emails. This isn’t a free program, but it does save me tons of time and effort and like they say, time is money. Wish they would make a WordPress plugin of this program.
Joni Solis´s last blog ..horse-logo-web-sbf Flickr
Please be careful that you’re not just hitting spam on anyone with bad English.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..UPDATES-
Dennis, if I did that – I would have to spam my own comments
I am glad you can find the humor in these attempts to enter people’s blogs by any means possible. I find it very annoying and just have a hard time understanding what kick they get out of it. But I do like your post about it. Thanks.
Andre Arnett´s last blog ..All About Affiliate Programs 101
Sometimes we just have to play the hand that was dealt to us and make the best out of it
So please do tell, what captcha WordPress comment plugin did you go with?
Also I just now finally installed a new WordPress blog site with your Expert WordPress program (love the step by step videos!) and noticed that Akismet is only free for non commercial use. I really don’t want another monthly bill, so can you suggest another free WordPress pugins for spam?
“Akismet is free for personal use.” http://akismet.com/
Joni Solis´s last blog ..New national organization to help horse rescues
Joni,
I use Akismet on this blog combined with “WP-SpamFree” and “Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam” http://www.theblog.ca/anti-spam , last one responcible for the captcha
Some of the spam I receive is just ridiculous. I mean who is really going to let a 10 paragraph blog in a comment full of links through?
I know what you mean about seeing more human spam now, though. If someone’s not at least attempting to add to the conversation, I’m not approving it.
Jared Detroit´s last blog ..Zoho CRM Quick Start Guide
Thanks for the spam pugin info.
Strange, when I do a search for WP-SpamFree in the WordPress pugin search box in my WordPress admin I get only two results: AVH First Defense Against Spam and Mollom.
Joni Solis´s last blog ..ringofbeauty-wp Flickr
Akismet is really good for most spam. I’ve found one called (WP-Ban)??? that worked for a blog that got an exceptional amount of spam. Basically you can identify IP addresses that are contributing most of your spam and ban them. I found that to work well as I most of my spam was coming from a couple of IP addresses.
Jared Detroit´s last blog ..Zoho CRM Quick Start Guide
Brilliant article, little confused, but it seems to make sense! Your blog is unique in that you get three nofollow comments before you get dofollow, which I believe is a great way to stop spam.
Christopher Roberts´s last blog ..Why Is New Technology So Exciting
you said in your post that you locate the ip and those that came from third world, do you delete them without even having a look at?
if yes then you are not fighting spammers but with the third world.
i am hired for this job but i do read the full post then if there is something to say, i comment other wise i leave.
Greg Plummer´s last blog ..Best Fix For PC Registry Problems And Computer Crashes
Greg,
I’m not fighting any country but if I can see consistently spam coming from same location what do you think I should do? Waste my time on dealing with that spam every day or just use the rules to completely blog IP’s I know always send spam my way? My goal is to provide useful information for people on this blog but time is always short I use most efficient methods to do things.
What’s discouraging is how there are many programs that autocomment on thousands of blogs at a time. I was hit with a flurry of spam comments from adult sites that made me spend hours cleaning it all up – yeah, it sucks but makes you happy that you worked toward keeping spam out
Murlu´s last blog ..How-To Setup A Simple Online Store Using Paypal
If you make your blog no-follow you will receive more quality comments and less spam.
Jamelia´s last blog ..Making Money from WordPress
Ever since I started using Disqus for the comments at my blog the spam decreased significantly, some very creative spammers find their way – but as I daily review all comments and contact emails they don`t achieve much – if anything.By the way when it comes to ip addresses its increasingly easy for one to use any range of them with little or no technical skills , so I don`t think they can be used to determine the location of the spammers.