Random Spam Comment in my Blog?

[CrusaderAD]

Can someone please explain these spam comments I get on my blog? I mean, do people surf forums for links and paste these stupid comments for no reason? What's the motive for this? They're always some random off-topic comment that usually ends up trying to flatter the writer. Why would anyone waste their time?

[Paqman]

Why would anyone waste their time?

They don't. The posts are made by bots. All they want to do is get their link onto as many sites as possible, either to drive traffic directly, or to improve their Google pagerank (and therefore their ad revenues).

I use Akismet (http://akismet.com/) to block the spam on my blog, it does a really good job.

[CrusaderAD]

They don't. The posts are made by bots. All they want to do is get their link onto as many sites as possible, either to drive traffic directly, or to improve their Google pagerank (and therefore their ad revenues).

Is that even legal?

[Paqman]

Is that even legal?

I don't see why it wouldn't be. That doesn't mean the people that do it aren't the scum of the internet, though.

[coffeecat]

@CerealCypher, if you get commments that you are not sure whether they are from spambots or not, check to see if they have hidden links to images, usually gifs or jpegs. We get spammers using this technique contaminating the forum here.

[CrusaderAD]

@CerealCypher, if you get commments that you are not sure whether they are from spambots or not, check to see if they have hidden links to images, usually gifs or jpegs. We get spammers using this technique contaminating the forum here.

Thanks for the heads up. Those jerks make it pretty obvious that they're spam most of the time. Imagine how much faster the Web would perform without all these losers.

[satanselbow]

You will want to put some form of security in place as once one gets it will go tell 10 of it's f(r)iends :(


... and we all love a good captcha :D

[eriktheblu]

Spam on my blog stopped when I restricted comments to subscribers. Since I have no subscribers, there is no spam.

The forum I moderate doesn't seem to have much software in place, but the spam density is manageable manually. I try to make a point of reporting to http://www.stopforumspam.com/.

[sandyd]

a) Use Akismet

b) Use one of the free* comment systems, such a livefyre, intensedebate, disqus... All of those have inbuilt spam filters.

[stonewilson]

More and more tools were written to spam blogs, forums and other kinds of websites, the best way to get rid of those spammers is disable the hyperlink of your comments (add nofollow meta is not enough!), if there is no benefits, they will leave.

[forrestcupp]

I use Akismet (http://akismet.com/) to block the spam on my blog, it does a really good job.


a) Use Akismet
Don't you have to pay to use Akismet? I found another free one that blocked all spam, but it also didn't work right to let anyone post comments.

I have mine set up so that I have to moderate the first comment from each person. No spam gets through, but I also have to moderate a lot of spam.

[CrusaderAD]

No spam gets through, but I also have to moderate a lot of spam.

Yep, this is exactly the biggest problem I'm facing.

[CharlesA]

Yep, this is exactly the biggest problem I'm facing.
I can see how that can be a problem.

I finally got around to adding a contact page to my site since I didn't want to risk throwing my email address out there even if it was obfuscated.

I admin a small forum and we haven't gotten all that much spam, but that's probably because we are small and we need to have an admin activate each account before they can post.