What’s been going on with the spam lately
Commenter “T” asks whether I’ve turned off my spam filter, because more spam than usual appears to be getting through in the last few days.
I’d never do that, I can assure you. Spam comes into a blog like this at a pretty fast clip, and if I turned off the spam filter, spam would quickly overwhelm the comments. For example, as I write this it’s around 11 AM, and just this morning about 125 spam comments have already been blocked. And sometimes there are runs of spam that are a lot faster than that, close to that many in just a couple of minutes.
Spam continually seeks to find a way around the defenses ranged against it. Some small amount always gets through the filter, although the great majority is effectively blocked. When I’m at my computer, I periodically check the comments section and delete the spam that has gotten through. You don’t usually see the spam I delete, because most has been placed on threads that are no longer active. But lately, although the amount of spam is the same, it’s been deposited more often on active threads instead of old threads. So it’s been a bit more noticeable lately for that reason.
Since—contrary to what it might seem sometimes—I don’t spend my entire life at the computer, when I’m away from it this rogue spam piles up just a little bit more. That’s why you’re seeing a slightly increased amount of it lately. Most likely it will get better in a couple of days, if past experience is any guide. I’d rather not add extra hurdles to posting, such as Captcha (which I detest) or further registration, so I’m going to see if other approaches will effectively control it. I think they will.
You just need to turn off the Website box in the leave a reply profile. No website, no benefit to spamming websites people can’t click on.
I saw this myself personally, and they went on for a few days. Then stopped. Then resumed. Then stopped.
You, Landlady, are The Best.
Is it only me or does this website load slowly the stakemis page made saying take off rest of day neo working not now no.
I don’t understand where spam comes from. It’s not useful, always tried to be blocked, and accomplishes what? Who’s behind it and why?
Just to be a nuisance?
A parasite?
Neo, thank you for all your effort to make your blog so enjoyable.
And, it isn’t just your writing that is enjoyable (although that, in itself, would be enough); it is also the wonderful, thoughtful, and sometimes funny comments from your “community” that are interesting as well.
So, spam be damned!
vanderleun:
It’s only you.
waitup:
Here’s everything you always wanted to know about comment spam and were unafraid to ask.
Short version: the goal is to place a link as part of the comment, and the link could either be clicked on (rarely happens) or boost that website’s Google rating and cause it to rise in the Google listings that result from searches.
I am tech illiterate, but I don’t understand why some of the genius hackers out there can’t find a way to invade the sites of spammers and cause a meltdown. I only see the spam that gets caught in the Yahoo filter, but I am sick of Dr. Oz and those people who think I might be looking for a Russian wife, to say nothing of messages written in languages I can’t identify.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to screen blog comments.
Word press is actually pretty easy about that.
Just click, read, click. It’s done. Now just repeat 5, 10, 15 times a day.
Of course, after a certain point it becomes intolerable.