Leg Iron has been noticing an increase in blog spam of late. So have I. Mine, unlike his cannot be considered artistic an any way. Usually they are feeble attempts at sycophancy. Poorly written indicating that English is not their first language and often so far off-topic that no one would allow them though moderation anyway. And, given that I have plug ins that stop the bots, I suspect that they are real people paid to do this. I’m not sure how effective it is as WordPress has first comment moderation, so even if Akismet doesn’t kill ’em dead, they never get out of moderation and into the daylight of SEO.
Another trick that came into my in-box this morning was a link builder who wanted me to install a PHP script on my site that would put a footer into this blog with lots of spammy links. Ten out of ten for effrontery, but even for the princely sum of $175 for the year, it ain’t going to happen – in your fucking dreams, matey. As I state on my contact page, commercial overtures (read spam) will be deleted. Nor do I answer the exhortations of those spammers who think that their guest posts are in any way a benefit to me. I think I’m supposed to be pleased and flattered that some semi-literate spammer wants to flood my blog with their tacky advertising.
People, it ain’t gonna happen. Okay?
Good man. Keep these wretches off your blog. How’s the biking going these days? Not seen many on the B660 recently apart from 4 cops in a line obviously either on a mission or training.
None ever get through. First comment moderation is the portcullis that stops ’em dead. As for the idea that I would install some rogue PHP – that’s a new one on me. The twat must have thought I’d come down with the last shower of rain.
I’m still riding regularly. I’ll be training up new instructors later this week. That’s fun.
I recently saw a couple of comments to posts of mine at Max Farquar, which at first glance appeared genuine. They came from plausible names, and seemed to be related to the subject matter. However in each I spotted a single link to a totally unrelated site and deleted them. Both IP’s were from the Philippines. As far as I’m aware Max doesn’t use first comment moderation, so this obviously wouldn’t catch them, and it suggests that some spammers are getting smart, and realising gibberish isn’t good enough.
Because I take a zero tolerance approach to these bastards, first comment moderation is a must. I don’t pay for this place so that they can leech off it.
Excellent. Training the trainers sounds much better than training novices.
It is.
“I suspect that they are real people paid to do this.”
They are. The spam industry – and it really is an industry now – even pays people (often kids) to ‘solve’ those CAPTCHA things too now. And they can still make a profit. The SEO industry doesn’t help: it’s resulted in a lot of link-bait ‘blogs’ and glorified press releases that tend not to bother much with anti-spam measures, so the web is flooded with both.
First comment moderation is pretty much the only game in town now for proper bloggers.