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Friday, February 25, 2005 1:20 PM PT Posted by David Lake
Defeating Comment Spam
If you read or post to weblogs, you've undoubtedly seen comment spam. You know, those annoying posts, peppered among legitimate blog comments, that promise to grow your anatomy or help you find online gambling sites. If you keep your own weblog, you've most likely had to clean up the spam, or you will. (It's entirely possible that you'll find comment spam in this entry at some point.)Comment spam differs from e-mail spam in that the spammer's primary goal is to boost their Web page rankings with Google. A higher page rank means the spammer's site gets listed above other sites in certain Google searches. And that means more potential site visitors and paying customers for spammers.
I began tracking comment spam on our own weblogs just two and a half months ago. Since that time, our two blogs have been hit with approximately 4000 spam comments. For some bloggers, comment spam is so bad that they've thrown their hands up in frustration and simply disabled all blog comments, legitimate or otherwise.
I'm optimistic here at PC World and believe comment spam can be beaten down with technology (and a little hands-on management). So don't expect us to shut down comments and deny you access to the conversation. Of the 4000 spam comments we've tracked to date, about 20 percent initially made it past our blacklist and filters. But with a little management--that means banning spammed URLs--we're now seeing only two to three spam comments a day. Now you get to see less comment spam, and I don't have to spend mornings deleting it.
Even more gratifying, though, is that spammers have to continue to register new domains in which to spam PC World blogs. While it requires time and money for a spammer to register a new domain, it only takes me about 5 seconds to ban it. That feels good.
If you're a blogger and overrun with comment spam, there are many resources to help you out. The first place to start is the vendor of your blogging software.
And hey, if you're not spamming us, comment away!
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I am getting alot of spam (email) from one company (the name keeps changing), but whenever I block it, they get a new email domain, and after one or two new email domains, they get a new website. They are going to run out of domain names and money, hopefully before I run out of blocks (I can only have 200). Domains include: sogoodrates.com, bestlenderz.com, lenderz4you.com, greatrarez.com. They keep sending me email on february 14th. I got two on february 14th today! (today is the 25th). It is very unusual. All email from them comes on february 14th, 2005, no matter what date it is currently. I changed my email address so they will give up.
This is a spam. No wait a troll. I am a troll, and I find this funny.
Non troll comment by die hard troll. Because I find it funny.
Anonymous here needs to tell us how he knows that it is not multiple companys spamming him. Seems to me that everyone gets lots of spam from lots of domains. I even got more than 2 on the 14th. Try an nslookup on the domains
What's happening with Google these days? Thay used to be the best search engine going now every search you do is littered with spammers and worse...directories!
Example. Try putting in a search for best mobile phone deals (UK). Not until the 3rd page do you come across a company that actually sells mobile phones. Then a few more pages of spamming and directories and.....oh look, another seller of mobile phones.
As some one who works on computers for people , and mostly the older adults. I am finding this to be very bad. in fact I am to the point of seeing if there is any leagel way of stopping this. I do the work for free for the older adults and now I am spending most of my time getting this stuff out of there systems. It starts in the email and before they know it they have had there homepage changed and locked in some rebuilding loop that is very hard to get off. And yes they have firewalls and all.
But what they are doing to peoples computers by changing and loading stuff is out of bounds.
If you went to the gas station to get gas and while you where paying for it a guy came out and put stickers all over your car and while he was at it took you papers out of the glove box and loaded it up with his crap, and then locked the door to your car till you did what he wanted, you would call the police and have him put away. Well it is the same thing with the computers. they are coming in and changing it and locking it up for there use.
Why don't the countries put there foot down and stop this. Put the spamers away for a few years is what I say.
"Try putting in a search for best mobile phone deals (UK)."
I did. Every hit offered to sell me a phone or some sort of associated stuff.
Never did find a link that would count as spam.
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