R. Garcia's Website
  • Home
  • Documents
    • Fiction
    • Poetry and Poetry-Related
    • Humor
    • Essays
    • Photographs
  • Blog: The Eclectic Life
  • Quotes
  • Books
    • The Sun Zebra
  • : ^ )
    • Fun Quotes
    • Rolando's Official Web Mascot
    • Cool Videos
    • The Power of Words
    • Odd and Fantastic Pictures
  • Contact

Are You A Blogger? Beware of Forum Spammers!

10/5/2012

10 Comments

 
Every blogger eventually gets to the point where he/she begins to get noticed. Unfortunately, I am not talking about the kind of attention bloggers want.  I reached this point with my “Indie authors are rude, pushy, completely self-absorbed, and their books suck” post in December of last year, which got a lot of people talking about it. Almost immediately I began getting comments like this one by a character named Coach Factory O:

“Hi, this is my first visit to your blog! Our group of volunteers and start a new initiative in a coHi, this is my first visit to your blog! Our group of volunteers and start a new initiative in a community in the same niche.Your blog provides us with useful information to work on.You have done a good job.”

This was a weird comment that said nothing related to my post and used mangled English. I deleted it but I got more such comments and then they spread to other posts in my blog. I realized it had finally happened. I had attracted the forum spammers!

Forum spammers can be either persons or robots that leave comments on your website.  The robots are programs that search the web for relevant blogs and other outlets with comment sections and leave comments at random. The comments sometimes don’t make sense such as the following one by “Tory Burch” which I got in five of my posts in one day:

“detection of data errors or abnormal first notify the relevant technical personnel”

Usually the comments are more coherent and designed to flatter you like the following comment by Technic:

“It constantly shocks me exactly how blog web page entrepreneurs for example your self can discover a while plus the commitment to bring on creating exceptional articles. Your website is amazing and one of my own ought to study blogs. I basically want to say thanks.”

And some are even funny, like this one by Corset Wholesal:

“Great information, First of all many thanks to the author who wrote this article. It is incomprehensible to me now, but in general, the usefulness and significance is overwhelming. Thanks again and good luck!”

It looks like these comments were translated into English from another language with one of those web translators.

Forum spammers can have two purposes. The first is that by leaving a post on website “A” with a link to website “B” the spammer artificially increases the number of websites that link to website “B” and thus increases the visibility of website “B” for search engines (search engine optimization: SEO). It is a way to make a website more noticeable. The second purpose is that sometimes the link in the comment leads to a phishing site with the intent of identity theft.

The spammer problem not only turned into a bit of a nuisance for me, but also it is a bit depressing to get back to my blog and learn that my readers left ten comments only to find out that all of them are spam. I have now switched to comment moderation. This means I have to approve every comment before it appears on my site. Unfortunately this destroys any chance of back and forth discussion among my readers.

There are tens of thousands of spammers both robot and human roaming the web nowadays. The programmers of the robot spammers are locked in an arms race with anti-virus/spam companies. There are anti-bot programs like those hard to reach CAPTCHA recognition codes that were successful for a while, but a new generation of spambots has arisen that can surmount this barrier.

So far I can recognize the comments left by spammers from their nonsense words, their mangled English, their repetitiveness, or their lack of relation to the particular blog post. But spammers are getting more sophisticated. What happens if I get a single comment like:

“Great post, thanks for sharing!”

The content of this comment is very general; it could make sense within the framework of many posts. Should I accept it or delete it? Sometimes people don’t have the time to write a long post making specific references to the subject matter of the post. I don’t want to shut readers out of my blog, but at the same time I don’t want to approve comments with links to potentially malicious sites.

What do you do?

                                   ***
If you like this blog you can have links to each week's posts delivered to your e-mail address. Please click here.
10 Comments
Mike Hopkins link
10/7/2012 05:43:05 pm

Hello Rolando:

Yes, this is a problem. I get these spammers from time to time and delect their comment & link to other things.

Take care and thanks for this information,
Mike

Reply
Rolando link
10/8/2012 02:23:32 am

Thanks for your comment Mike I guess it's one of those unavoidable evils.

Reply
cath link
10/7/2012 11:27:08 pm

I started getting spam comments a little while back. Blogger catches many of them, but occasionally one gets through. If it is from a reader I know, and it is brief, I leave it, but if it is generic or goofy from a stranger, I hit delete. My blog is small enough I don't have much of a problem with it. I usually have a good laugh.

I also don't like comments like "follow my blog and I will follow yours". Most of the time it is someone fishing for followers, and I decline. Blogging to me isn't about numbers, but about writing and reading what I enjoy. :D

Reply
Rolando link
10/8/2012 02:30:52 am

Thanks for your comment Cathy. I don't have an idea of how much spam weebly catches, but a significant amount gets through to me. Hopefully I will continue to, like you say, write and read what I enjoy.

Reply
Patricia Lynne link
10/9/2012 03:17:58 am

I've gotten those comments from time to time. I tend not to worry about them. They are few and far between for me. If they increase and start becoming a problem then I'll turn on moderation.

Reply
Rolando link
10/10/2012 02:54:15 am

As your blog gets visibility these spammers will come to you in greater numbers. Moderation is the best way I know to deal with this but the lag time tends to ruin communication among readers. Thanks for your comment Patricia.

Reply
Louise Sorensen link
10/9/2012 05:18:15 am

I have a few, but didn't realize they link up to their own blog to increase traffic.
One way to check their authenticity is to click on their identity. It will take you to some kind of site. On second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea.
Will be more vigilant in future. Thanks for the heads up.

Reply
Rolando link
10/10/2012 02:57:29 am

Yes Louise, don't click on those links, they may be dangerous. This is also why I am concerned about approving spam posts. I don't want links in the comment thread of my posts that pose a risk for readers if they click on them.

Reply
Mary Yuhas link
10/10/2012 10:04:43 pm

Very informative, Rolando. I had no idea. I have received a couple of these and they are on my blog on the Sun-Sentinel, which has tons of security. I've always wondered - how do these people make money doing these weird things because they spend a lot of time at it.

Reply
Rolando link
10/11/2012 11:51:15 am

Thanks for your comment Mary, and yes it works for them if they are able to leave their links on thousands of websites; they get paid for that, both the people and those who provide the robots.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    I am a tinker, tailor,
    soldier, sailor,
    rich man, poor man,
    beggar-man, thief!

    Follow Phantomimic on Twitter

    RSS Feed

    Blogroll

    Laura Novak
    Barbara Alfaro
    Suzanne Rosenwasser
    Sunny Lockwood
    Christine Macdonald
    Jennie Rosenbaum
    Kristen Lamb
    Joe Konrath
    Sweepy Jean
    Ingrid Ricks
    The Jotter
    Robert David MacNeil
    Molly Greene
    The Passive Voice
    Third Sunday Blog Carnival
    Marilou George
    Laura Zera
    Jeri Walker-Bickett
    Lia London

    Categories

    All
    Advice For Writers
    Amazon
    Art
    Author
    Ballet
    Bloggers
    Bluegrass Music
    Book Promotion
    Book Review
    Cats
    Censorship
    Clopper Mill
    Coffe
    Cool Places
    Coral Castle
    E Books
    E-Books
    Enchanted Highway
    Fair
    Fiction
    Glenstone
    Goodreads
    Grammar
    Guest Post
    Harry Potter
    Indie
    Interview
    Issues
    Kdp Select
    Kindle
    Milestone
    Milestones
    Muses
    Nell
    Novel
    Nuclear Missile Sites
    Painting
    Picture
    Poe Toaster
    Poetry
    Politics
    Prague Quadrennial
    Print Books
    Quality
    Reading
    Restaurant At Patowack Farm
    Science
    Scribd
    Self Publishing
    Self-Publishing
    Short Story
    Song
    Spirit Women
    Spotlight
    Sun Zebra
    Supernatural
    Theater
    The Sedlec Ossuary
    Video
    Women
    Words
    Writer
    Writers
    Writer's Block
    Writing

    Archives

    April 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    January 2015
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    October 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.