Wednesday, 20 June
It’s been a while since I turned off word verification and comment moderation on my various blog sites. After the change, I was averaging 5-10 spam comments per week. Most of them were on my ‘original’ blog, Two to Travel. This is the blog where I recount our non-Phaeton travels. It has an international readership, which, I believe exponentially increases the chances of receiving spam comments. The good news, all of the spam comments were caught by the Blogger filter.
The spam comments tapered off to almost nothing for a while, but now they seem to be on the rise again. And this time, Phaeton Journeys seems to be the target. Why? Who knows; my mind doesn’t work like a spammer’s mind works. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Two to Travel has been on hiatus for a while. That’s about to change, however, so we’ll see what happens then.
All spam comments are being caught by the filter, and I have comment moderation turned on for any post that is older than 14 days. Overall, I’m a happy camper — though I can’t help but wish that spammers had something better to do than to flood the www with meaningless words.
If you don’t have comment notification turned on, you might consider checking your spam box every once in a while. To do so (in the new Blogger interface):
- Go to your Dashboard.
- From the list on the left, select Comments.
- Click the Awaiting Moderation and Spam boxes individually to see if there are any comments in either box and take action accordingly. (I usually report them to Blogger as spam and then delete them.)
By the way, a more important reason to occasionally check your spam box — to make sure legitimate comments have not been filtered as spam by Blogger. I’ve fished quite a few out of the spam box and restored them to their rightful place in the blog world.
Good post - I've had similar experiences with spam comments. And I really don't understand how spammers actually gain anything.
ReplyDeleteMe neither; but I guess there are people who click on the links they usually include. Not going to fall into the trap :-)))
DeleteSpam? I love Spam, espcially fried with eggs for breakfast (sorry, I couldn't resist).
ReplyDeleteIn almost two years of blogging, I have received maybe a half dozen spam comments and only one was not caught by the spam filter. Maybe that's what I get for having a boring blog? ;c)
Well mine must be more boring than yours Paul. I get almost no spam AND blogger doesn't catch any either but I do leave comment moderation on because I love having the comments come in my email. Without those I wouldn't get any email. :-))
ReplyDeleteYou can have the comments come to your email without moderation turned on. I get all my comments in email; even those on the less-than-two weeks old posts.
DeleteI get a few a week. Mostly from foreign countries, some even in a foreign language. As far as I can tell, most are sexual in nature. No idea why I get them. Blogger has caught all of them as spam so I am leaving the word verification turned off as it seems most legitimate readers don't want to bother with it. I think these spammers may get paid per comment they post on any blog. Not sure, but that's what I'm thinking. Pain in the you know what!
ReplyDeleteWe do have spam turned on...thank goodness. Like your blog, for some reason the last month to six weeks we have received more spam than normal. Thanks to Blogger they don't show!
ReplyDeleteMy blog has been spammed by someone in Russia recently and I get 10-15 spam comments daily. Love that blogger catches them ALL! After a while, I got sick of the emails too and set up a filter to send them all to the trash (they were all on the same post) Every day, I go into my spam folder, verify it's only the Russians and hit "delete" :)
ReplyDeleteI'm very happy with Bloggers spam tools.
The filter has come a long way from the early days; no doubt about that.
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