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Spam Rapidly Increasing In Weblog Comments

Posted by simoniker on from the generally-defined-as-not-good dept.

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.

4 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Google? by realdpk · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes. That's partly why Google's search results are nearly useless any more - especially while looking for information about specific brand-named products. This whole blog-spam thing has been known about for a very long time, and I have yet to see it addressed - I'm surprised that it's finally picked up by the media though. Maybe that'll force Google to update their ranking code before their IPO.

  2. This was happening to my guestbook too by Phoenix-kun · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had the same problem with the guestbook on my website. I was used to the occasional, manually entered, advertisement that I would then promptly remove. However, suddenly my guestbook was being hit with dozens of spam advertisements at a time, all at the same time. This was taking place every couple of days. It was always the same ads with bogus compliments, but the source IP addresses would vary widely from attack to attack. A review of my access log showed spybots looking for the presence of certain common guestbook scripts, one of which I was using. Then later, the spambot would hit my site executing the scripts directly. I got around it by changing the file name of the script. Normal users to my site would follow the link and get to the guestbook with no problem. But since the spambots depended on the script being a certain name, they would fail with a 404 error.

    --
    Phoenix
  3. Tell me something new... by Manuzhai · · Score: 3, Informative

    Jeremy Zawodny on this:

    SMTP Sender Authentication, Blog Spam, and PageRank
    Cheap Viagra, Vicodin, Xanax, Prescription Drugs, and Penis Enlargement Pills!!!
    Gureilla Tactics Against Blog Comment Spammers

    Russell Beattie on this:
    Googler Comments

    Simon Willison on this:
    Battling Comment Spam
    Banning Google Comments

    Michael Fagan on this:
    Seven Ideas for a Spam Free Blog

    Scott Johnson on this:
    A Possible Blog Comment Spam Solution

  4. Re:I have a quick and dirty solution. by Alan · · Score: 4, Informative
    There has been some discussion on this that I've seen on various blogs I read, and basically the concensus seems to be that people don't want to make the barrier to entry of submitting a comment harder (ie: accounts), as part of the beauty of blog comments is the spontinaity. Most people I've seen have either done some of the 7 tips for a spam free blog or are using the MT Blacklist plugin.


    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.