Bel's Adventures in Blogland: Spam
Created | Updated Mar 18, 2012
Last week, I asked Dmitri if he thought the Post readers could be interested in my experiences in the 'blog-o-sphere' and referred him to the article I had written about it last year. I suggested I could write a mini series, because there are so many things that fascinate me. He told me to go ahead (but then he would say so, after all, he is the editor of this user-generated paper); so here I go.
Just like for articles/entries/journals here on h2g2, it is possible to leave a comment on a blog post. Much as we all love to have comments, we don't embrace spam, so there are ways to reduce or even avoid spam to appear on your blog. The options vary greatly, depending on which blog host you are using. Below are the comment options for Blogger and Wordpress.
Blogger
- Comments:
Show/Hide
Note: Selecting "Hide" does not delete existing comments - you can show them at any time by re-selecting "Show". - Who Can Comment?
Anyone - includes Anonymous Users
Registered Users - includes OpenID
Users with Google Accounts
Only members of this blog - Comment Form Message
- Comment moderation:
Always
Only on posts older than X days
Never
Review comments before they are published. A link will appear on your dashboard when there are comments to review. - Email address:
We will email you at this address when a non-member leaves a comment on your blog. Leave blank if you don't want to receive these emails. - Show word verification for comments?
Yes/No
This will require people leaving comments on your blog to complete a word verification step, which will help reduce comment spam. Learn more
Blog authors will not see word verification for comments. - Show profile images on comments?
Yes/No - Comment Notification Email:
Choose from contacts
You can enter up to ten email addresses, separated by commas. We will email these addresses when someone leaves a comment on your blog.
(There's a box where you can write a few words.)
Wordpress
Discussion Settings- Default article settings:
Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article
Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)
Allow people to post comments on new articles (These settings may be overridden for individual articles.) - Other comment settings:
Comment author must fill out name and e-mail
Users must be registered and logged in to comment
Automatically close comments on articles older than X days
Enable threaded (nested) comments X levels deep
Break comments into pages with top level comments per page and the page displayed by default
Comments should be displayed with the comments at the top of each page - E-mail me whenever:
Anyone posts a comment
A comment is held for moderation
Someone likes one of my posts
Someone follows my blog - Before a comment appears:
An administrator must always approve the comment
Comment author must have a previously approved comment - Comment Moderation:
Don't discard spam on old posts
Hold a comment in the queue if it contains 2 or more links. (A common characteristic of comment spam is a large number of hyperlinks.) When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it will be held in the moderation queue. One word or IP per line. It will match inside words, so "press" will match "WordPress".
For my Blogger blog I've enabled the 'word verification' (better known as CAPTCHA: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). This isn't an ideal solution, because many people are having difficulties to decipher them – or is it just me? However, without it I'd have to set it to 'wait for approval' whcih is even less ideal as I'm not at the PC all day (plus the email notifications don't work for some odd reason), or have a really full spam box. Just the other day one of my blog posts had more than 40 views from another blogger account with the promising name of awesome swimsuit models. 
Just why and how that happened, I don't know, I don't mention swimsuits anywhere in my blog. However, I'm sure my spam box would have been overflowing with links to their dodgy site (I googled it. It looked dodgy) if it hadn't been for the CAPTCHA hurdle. I've seen a way around the CAPTCHA on one blog, I may try to find out how it is done and apply it to my blog.
The beauty on Wordpress is that each first comment has to be approved, so once I've given my OK, this account can leave comments without any hurdles. The email notification works without failure, and they're pretty good at filtering spam, too: they tell me that they've protected my site from 477 spam comments already - that's roughly 20 times as many as real comments. I don't get to see most of those, it is only occasionally that I find something in my spam box, like these recent two:
It is very important to know what decision means when shopping for a detective camera. CCTV (closed enterprise television) cameras range in decision from 330 TVL (tv set lines) in order to 600 TVL. Regarding color decision, CCTV cameras max out and about at 560 outlines, however you could possibly get black and white CCTV detective cameras in 600 TVL. where to buy a security camera security cctv camera IP detective cameras are now accessible in much higher decision (up to Five megapixels inside resolution). Precisely what does this mean when contriving a system?
Its namesake might be red, but the local M[]1 is firmly in the black. And to ensure things stay that way, M[] Graphic Services ***, a printing company catering to direct-mail marketing organizations, completed its initial public offering last week. The W****, N.J., firm, founded in 1973, raised $4.8 million through the offering of 600,000 shares of common stock via J**** & Co. Inc. of New York. The shares were priced at $8. M[], which opened trading on the over-the-counter market on Aug. 14, plans to switch to the American Stock Exchange on Aug. 21. The company's symbol is ****.
internet marketing tools
Those companies must be using particularly bad botware, as the comments had no relation at all to the post they were left. Some have such clever software that it is hard to tell whether the post is spam or not. In all, blogging is a great adventure.
