I’m having a late lunch break and started to check all comments that needed to be moderated for my blog. And as usual, there’s a lot of spam between those comments! Fortunately, this blog is hosted by WordPress.com and they know how to detect those spammers easily! So all I have to do is empty the spam folder once in a while. It’s great! But just for the fun of it, let’s look at a few of those. 🙂

Yeah, there it is… My spam folder. I had 56 spam messages in it and was just deleting them one by one, since it’s fun seeing how spammers tend to operate. (And educational too.) But I decided at one point that it could be educational for others too, so here it is.

One thing you will notice is that most spammers will include hyperlinks to some other site. These could be malicious sites or just some obscure web shop that needs free advertisements. Most of it is in English, which makes sense since most of this blog is in English. But the Russian post in this list is noteworthy!

Another post I’ve noticed says: “Hi there would you mind letting me know which hosting company you’re using? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 different web browsers and I must say this blog loads a lot quicker then most. Can you suggest a good web hosting provider at a honest price? Thanks a lot, I appreciate it!” Definitely noteworthy since it seems to be a valid request. I do wonder why it’s considered spam. But I’m smart so I’ve Googled for that remark and it happens to appear on dozens and dozens of other websites, where webmasters have allowed the comment to pass their filters! That’s not a wise move since approving such messages means that the sender is often approved for sending more comments too. Allowing this message might mean that he will follow-up with all kinds of spam, probably trying to sell Viagra or penis enlargement herbs. So, it’s spam. The spammer tries some innocent-looking message just so I would let my guards down and approve him as a valid commentator. Well, too bad he did not fool the WordPress filter. (Most likely because they’ve recognized his IP address.) The blog he’s included in his profile is most likely just a random blog post that he misuses to make things look even less suspicious.

I also tend to get a lot of compliments from spammers, probably hoping to play with my ego and confusing me to allow those messages. Again, WordPress isn’t fooled by them! One such spam message said: “Hey there, just became alerted to your blog through Google, and found that it is truly informative. I will be grateful if you continue this in future. Numerous people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!” which sounds nice. It’s linked to this post where I show a CGI image I’ve just created. Didn’t consider that post very informative, though. Just fun, and a follow-up on a earlier post that was more informative. The praise is nice, but just too generic to be considered real.

One more, as a comment on my post about Stupid Spammers: “In the event you suffer from any of these circumstances or injuries, it is worth taking the time to seek advice from your physician or physical therapist concerning the use of [SNIP! Spam-link!]” I don’t see any relation between this comment and the topic of my post, except that this too happens to be a dumb spammer. Many spam comments are like this. They are often not related to the topic you’re discussing or very generic by nature. When the comment isn’t on-topic, be aware!

Anyway, one thing that most of those comment spam have in common is that they’re trying to promote all kinds of medication. Then again, that’s also true for many normal spam. But if you want to fight blog spam in your own blog then make sure that any commentator is moderated for at least a month, or 10 comments, whatever is more. Be aware of  their posts and if those comments are too generic, it’s most likely that he commentator isn’t really reading your blog but just wants to get more rights to comment without moderation. (And once they can do that, they will fill your blog with a lot of spam, just before you’ll notice what they’re doing and can put a stop to them!)

Blog spam can destroy any blog, make them unreadable for the regular visitor while also helping spammers to have their spam be found by various search engines. If I would allow spam in my blog, people who would look for common words in my blog (CGI, Poser, Grepolis, etc.) will find my blog but when visiting it, they would see just spam. So, bloggers should have a very good reason to block blog spam, or else no one will follow their blogs…