Marco Tech Blog

September 22, 2009

Creative Blog Spam

I've seen some creative spam in the comments of my blog...

I've seen some creative spam in the comments of my blog. On average I get about one spam message a day. It is generally some off-topic comment with a link to a site for software, pills, or just about anything. Since all of the comments on my blog are filtered, it is easy to spot and delete them. But today, probably for the first time, one was so nicely crafted that after reading it I approved the comment, thinking this was a nice reader... only to see at a glance the URL in the link and realize this was just a way to get the link up (and having my site a good Google Rank, I guess links can be useful). Here was the text of the message (the link is omitted, of course, but that was not in the text):

I have been reading your blog last couple of weeks
and enjoy every bit. Thanks.

Yes, it sounds legitimate. But the blog post it was commenting mentioned my idea of providing books in PDF format and the link was for a PDF conversion tool. Spotted and deleted. Try again, but you win the "most creative blog spam award" for my site for now.

posted by marcocantu @ 11:47PM | 4 Comments [0 Pending]

4 Comments

Creative Blog Spam

You may want to check this plugin
 http://www.svenkubiak.de/nospamnx-en/
the strategy it uses is easy to reproduce if you don't
use Wordpress, and IME, it eliminates all the spam
without need for manual or automatic filtering,
captchas, etc.

Comment by Eric Grange [http://delphitools.info] on September 23, 10:59

Creative Blog Spam

I've been getting that sort of spam for quite a while. 
Generally, if it has a link, and Akismet doesn't 
automatically let it through (it's apparently got some 
magic to recognize people I've approved before), then 
I regard the comment with deep suspicion. Often the 
URL will clearly be something about prescription drugs 
or porn, and I can summarily mark the comment as spam. 
Otherwise I'll usually click through to the URL, and 
unless it's a real person's blog, I delete the 
comment.

Also, I've found that spam, especially this kind, only 
tends to be on my older posts -- and usually the same 
few over and over. So again, if it's a comment on one 
of those posts that I've mentally labeled as a "spam 
magnet", that's another tip-off.

Such fun to be a blogger, eh? At least spam filters 
are good enough that we don't have to deal with this 
very often.

Comment by Joe White [http://blog.excastle.com/] on September 23, 16:22

Creative Blog Spam

Another vote for Akismet and WordPress from me and some 
simple blog management.

I used to get upwards of 20 spam comments a day to my 
blog.  That plummeted when I went back and simply 
disabled comments on posts older than 6 months.

I also enabled Akismet after I upgraded to the latest 
WordPress.  I now get ~5 spam comments a day (slightly 
more after a new post), but Akismet has so far had a 
100% strike rate as far as identifying spam AS spam 
goes.

Comment by Jolyon Smith [http://www.deltics.co.nz/blog] on September 24, 00:00

Creative Blog Spam

As much as I think WordPress is a great tool, I have a 
custom blog engine (written in Delphi) that I prefer 
using. One of the advantages, is that by requiring a 
specific way to post comments, it is not subject to spam 
by automatic tools. I get about one spam message a week, 
which is very low from what I hear by other bloggers.

I doubt I'll build a new blog engine now, as this was 
quite some effort, but as it seems to work fine now, 
I'll keep it going.

Thanks for the advice, though.

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on September 24, 10:42

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