Spam Rapidly Increasing In Weblog Comments 387
dsurber writes "BBC News has a nice article discussing 'flyblogging', the phenomenon of spammers leaving advertising-related posts on personal weblogs. The writer comments: 'None of the other blogs I contribute to or run has been affected yet, but I can only assume it is a matter of time before the spammers move in, as they did first with UseNet and then with e-mail. It depresses me to think that any open medium can be so easily undermined by people with no scruples, no sense of responsibility and no idea of the damage they are doing.'" It seems a little surreal that people are having to develop anti-spam weblog tools.
Re:This is why... (Score:3, Informative)
I login to my blog page and add to the running log. No place for people to spam.
Though as a side note, I love getting spam about anti-spam software!
Re:Google? (Score:4, Informative)
This was happening to my guestbook too (Score:5, Informative)
I have had problems (Score:2, Informative)
1) If you get flooded with spam just go directly into MySQL and issue a DELETE...WHERE query, it's really too much trouble to use the MT frontend to delete multiple comments.
2) Check out MT-Blacklist at http://www.jayallen.org/misc/projects/mt-blacklist / [jayallen.org]
Tell me something new... (Score:3, Informative)
SMTP Sender Authentication, Blog Spam, and PageRank [zawodny.com]
Cheap Viagra, Vicodin, Xanax, Prescription Drugs, and Penis Enlargement Pills!!! [zawodny.com]
Gureilla Tactics Against Blog Comment Spammers [zawodny.com]
Russell Beattie [russellbeattie.com] on this:
Googler Comments [beattie.info]
Simon Willison [incutio.com] on this:
Battling Comment Spam [incutio.com]
Banning Google Comments [incutio.com]
Michael Fagan [faganfinder.com] on this:
Seven Ideas for a Spam Free Blog [yoz.com]
Scott Johnson [feedster.com] on this:
A Possible Blog Comment Spam Solution [feedster.com]
Re:I have a quick and dirty solution. (Score:5, Informative)
Once I installed the latter and did some of the former, I've had almost no spam, vs several hundred over a couple of days. Now whether that is testimony to how well the tips work or that the spammers are going in short bursts then taking breaks is still unknown.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How about... (Score:1, Informative)
Just like h1 exists to flag content as a level 1 heading (a bigger bold font isn't a heading). HTML means structure, not visual display (that's why we have CSS).
Same thing for the code tag.
Not as insurmountable a problem as with usenet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I've Noticed (Score:2, Informative)
The numbers I allways hear for spam are around 1 hit (purchase, mortgage lead, etc) per 100,000 emails sent. I've even heard 1 per 1,000,000.
Most Blog Spammers Use Crawlers (Score:2, Informative)
I was only hit twice by comment-spammers before I took action.
Using image-text to verify humanity on the other end of the connection wasn't an option, as it excluded sight-impared users. User registration was a no-go: I don't want to have to spend time validating user accounts. I did enough of that in my BBS Sysop days. Even MT-Blacklist is a bit of a pain, as you've got to deal with each spam comment individually once posted.
However, one thing I found in common between my spammers and the attacks I've seen on other sites was that prior to the spamming run, the site was crawled. So, I excluded the locations of the comment scripts in my robots.txt and set a trap to auto-ban any crawler that doesn't obey the excludes.
Well-behaved spiders/'bots can index the site. Ill-behaved or malicious crawlers that download the whole file tree regardless of excludes trigger a tripwire that locks them out. You can eyeball the details in this entry on my site: Setting a Spider Trap [rnovak.net]