Tuesday, February 07, 2017

How Does This Happen?

Spam comments. Where do they come from? Why are they there? I have been blogging for 10+ years. Only in the past two or three years have I received any spam comments. And they are always on posts I wrote in the past. When it was one spam comment every three to five months, I would just delete it. But two days ago I had seven spam comments in one day. They talked about Bitcoins, free iPhone 7s, duty free liquor and other unrelated subjects. Some comments were placed on more than one blog post.

Finally, I had had enough. I added comment moderation so I have to approve every comment before it is published. By the end of the day when I added comment moderation, the spam comments stopped coming. Is this permanent? We'll see.

First I thought the spam comments were advertisements. But now I wonder. Do the comments contain a link the reader can click that will lead to malware being installed on their computer? I don't know because I don't read the comments once I realize they are spam.

Have other bloggers had the same kind of spam? Is it a one time thing or has your kept coming? Is there anything else I can do beyond the comment moderation?

Whatever the issue, it makes me mad.

2 comments:

  1. Like you, I've been writing Phannie and Mae for more than a decade and made the decision to avoid comment moderation because I think it diminishes comments. A couple of years ago, I began to get an unusual number of spam comments, but I just toughed it out, deleting them as soon as I could. After a while, things got back to normal, and I get very few spam hits nowadays. My guess is that Blogger improved their spam filters. Always enjoy your blog; it's been on my reader for a long time. Cheers!

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  2. This has never happened to our blog. That would be when I quit!

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