Sunday 10 February 2013

Spam, spam, spam, spam…..

“Thanks for another wonderful article. The place else may anyone get that kind of info in such an ideal manner of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I am on the look for such information.”
Every so often I will go through the comments on my blogs that are identified as spam by Blogger (a job that Blogger does quite well by the way). And while it can be irritating to have to wade through hundreds of computer-generated comments some of them are actually quite funny. For example, this one: “A lot of thanks for all your valuable efforts on this web page. My mother delights in going through investigations and it is easy to understand why.” It’s nice to knows all my “valuable efforts” are not in vain and they keep the writer’s “mother” delighted.
Or how about this? “I wish to express some appreciation to you just for rescuing me from such a incident. Because of surfing around through the the net and seeing methods which were not helpful, I assumed my entire life was gone.” Here I saved someone’s life with one of my posts. Shouldn’t I get a medal?
Not quite to the same life-saving standard but it pleases me to know I also helped this poor lost soul: “This website was... how do you say it? Relevant!! Finally Ι have found something which helped me. Many thanks!”. I trust he will sleep easier now; I know I will.
But not everyone is happy. While both of my regular readers may want to periodically scream “Enough already” this follower wants more: “I ԁo trust all of the ideas you've offered on your post. They're really convincing and can certainly work. Nonetheless, the posts are very short for novices. May you please lengthen them a little from subsequent time?” Be careful what you ask for there sport.
Then there are those who would presume to to tell me my fashion sense needs updating. “If you are a fashion misfit, chances are you do not appearance and feel as good as you desire. Developing a excellent style is just not as difficult as you might consider.” Actually I feel great in a Harley tee-shirt, jeans, and work boots, but thanks for caring.
Looking for investment advice? “House value is extremely important in today's housing market. Hardly any individuals have any, and those that do, frequently have hardly any.”  As someone who has been known to “frequently have hardly any” I can relate, I think, but I still find the pitch less than compelling. Sorry.
And saving the best for last, this commenter may be lost, but there’s no doubting his ability to recognize quality when he sees it. “I don't even know how I stopped up here, but I thought this submit used to be great. I do not recognise who you are however certainly you are going to a famous blogger if you happen to are not already.” When I am a “famous blogger” I expect I’ll get an I-told-you-so.

28 comments:

  1. I notice there are some online businesses getting even more clever, with a real person offering personal comments and linking to their sites - well, if they want to go to that much trouble and it means employment for one more person, what the heck - publish it and let your readers decide.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Karen: As a general rule I'll block or delete anything with a commercial link unless there is some real value added by the comment or the link. But I don't get too many of those; mostly it's badly written and/or badly translated come-ons for something either totally irrelevant or totally outrageous.

      Delete
  2. LOL!!!!! great stuff! i was thinking the same thing canajun, im singing spam spam spam spam spam...

    personally i mark their comments as spam too. i have no interest in being connected to robolinks businesses. and, im getting irritated at the frequency of their attempts. ugh... ive turned on comment moderation as a result of the frequency too. maybe this type of spam will stop if they find it unproductive? i hope.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ms. M: For some reason folks will click on the links even though they know it's at best rubbish and at worst malicious. I think it's the Internet version of a wet paint sign.

      Delete
  3. I'm thinking of turning moderation back on, as I am now getting 30-40 of these a day. As you say, Blogger is pretty good at filtering them out from the actual blog, but I still get them all emailed to me and have to delete them. It's getting very tedious. I've had some of the ones you quote above, word-for-word the same, and usually with a link to payday loans or an online casino. My favourite (I've had several but deleted them all, so from memory) is the one that actually criticises me for relying too much on video in the post, and suggests rather snidely that I ought to try writing more. This, on a post without video or even a picture.

    Hanging is too good for them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Richard - If there was only a way to actually link back to the spammers directly then we could really have some fun.

      Delete
  4. Damn, I need to post more! I feel like a left out step-kid missing all of the a fore mentioned spam you speak of.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AZHD - I can turn on auto-forwarding if you'd like. :)

      Delete
  5. The spamming seems to be increasing. Oh well, I guess that's life in the blog lane.

    They can be funny to read, but mostly just painful.
    ~Keith

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Keith - It certainly does seem like that. The worst part is that periodically legitimate commenters get caught in the spam trap so you really need to check them out once in a while just in case. But otherwise the delete key is easy to use.

      Delete
  6. I too have noticed an increase in spam recently, although not as much as some seem to be experiencing. Blogger seems to catch 90% of them and if there is even a hint of a commercial link they get deleted.

    If it was a regular reader linking something they thought was valuable to the group that is different, but just to come in and promote crap is not okay.

    I do find it odd that about every 4th one or so I get an email letting me know i have a new comment, whereas most are just in the spam section of the comment dashboard.

    Thanks for the earworm.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "...if you happen to are not already." What kind of language translator creates that sort of grammar?

    For the life of me, I don't even understand the purpose of this sort of spam.

    ReplyDelete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  9. A recent spam comment on mine is followed by a link to a post about the Fiat 500 Abarth, so I assume they're trying to get traffic because of ads. The comment, as oddly worded as it was, seems to have been written by someone who actually read the post: "bike riding is really a great fun . i am always enjoy it when i am on sports bike.In these days an working person is always want a motorcycle to
    or a scooter to do the work and enjoy the ride."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alan - They certainly aren't great advertising for automatic translation software.

      Delete
  10. I finally turned the verification back on, it couldn't stand it any longer. I find it pretty annoying. Blogger does a pretty good job, but the odd ones slip through. It was getting particularly irksome around Christmas, one spam bot hit one of my older posts about 10 times.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dar - It's interesting how they will sometimes zero in on an old post and just hammer away at it. Must be keyword searching of some sort.

      Delete
  11. I don't think the comments are from computers. I think computers would do better. I think these are human voices with a very loose grip on English. Like teenagers in a back alley in Bangladesh earning micropennies for blog comments. Makes me sad. Like if I delete them a real person goes hungry. I'd be happier knowing they were produced by machines.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. David - Now you're making me feel bad for deleting them. :(

      Delete
  12. Canajun:

    I seldom get spam, only lately I've received only 2 per week. so Yes, I am getting a bit more than before but not a problem yet and It also appears that David is right. They are personalized comments so someone is actually reading

    bob
    Riding the Wet Coast

    ReplyDelete
  13. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I encourage everyone with a blog to set up in their system word verification and then set up Moderate comments after like about 10 days. All regular readers will have you set up in Google reader, or something else like it, and will leave their comments right away for the most part. Anythig you get past 10 days will likely be spam. You will then be notified that a comment is left. If it is legit, go ahead and post it. If it is spam, you can just delete it there. That way, you won't have all these stupid spam comments showing up on everyones Google Reader as well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is a setting in Blogger to have all comments moderated after 14 days, and I use this. The spam comments don't get through to the blog, but they still get sent to my email account for moderation. It's getting to be 20-30 a day now. The trouble is that the Captcha system that Blogger uses for verification is so awful that it deters legitimate comments. I asked my readers when Blogger moved from normal WV to Captcha, and they begged me to switch it off. People who used to comment on almost every post just couldn't be bothered any more. If Blogger stopped using Captcha the problem would be solved.

      Delete
    2. I have word verification off, which maybe why I get as much spam as I do, but I'm with Richard on this and would rather make it easier for legitimate readers to comment and delete the spam that to force Captcha on everyone. It's horrid! I also have moderation on over 14 days which also cuts a lot of the spam out. So all in all it's really not that big a deal, but they are getting more and more creative.

      Delete
  15. P.S. they are also getting creative, like linking their name (like a regulare real person name)on a stupid comment to some Web page for sales of something. Always check for links to another web page, unless you want them to advertise on your blog for free.

    ReplyDelete

Please feel free to comment, but any comments with commercial links will be deleted. You have been warned.