Legal Research

Blog Spam

I get a lot of Blog Spam. Maybe not as much as others but between 150-600 comments spam per day. The filter does a pretty good job of moving it into am junk folder for review later. I will admit that I don't always look through this as finely as I should (who has the time!?) since I found too many legitimate comments in the junk folder this weekend.

There does seem to be some trends in which comments get moved into the junk folder. Here's what I noticed and you can do what you want with them if you comment on blog postings here or other places.

1. If you use the word 'thank' or 'thanks' it goes to junk. It seems that most of the comment spam senders are thanking me for something and then passing on a URL that goes to some commercial, or nasty porn or scam site.

2. Some people habitually start their messages to me with 'Greetings' and this seems to guarantee your comment heads to junk. Nearly 20% of my blog spam uses Greetings as it's generic intro.

3. I suspect that there are similar issues with the word 'free' or anyone complimenting or congratulating me on my web design or content or just saying you are going to bookmark my site. All of these seem to be Trojan horses to try to get nasty URL's into my comments and influence the search rankings and hits for those sites (or to test if they can get through). I don't see it but I hear that most of the words for dubious financial schemes are bad for the filters as well.

4. If you include a URL it heads to junk. I think it's trying to protect me (and others) from scam URL's that will direct you to nasty sites that phish, infect or disgust.

Just know that I appreciate the comments you send and do try to read and post them if I see them.

I do try to post all messages of course, but I don't permission any abusive, scandalous, libelous, untruthful comments or ones that contain too much profanity, death threats, personal abuse, etc. - especially if they're from anonymous, pseudonymous or false identities. If you care enough to comment, then care enough to be real. After all it's my blog and I have to have some standards!

Thanks for reading and commenting. I haven't counted hits and feeds lately but there seem to be quite a few you all!

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on February 23, 2009 (boomark / email).