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Tag: Akismet

the variety of spammers

when you have a couple of websites you begin noticing a predictable situation: you get spammers. Unless you use a plugin such as Akismet, these can make your life miserable. Note that Akismet can occasionally misclassify a valid comment as spam, so you should still monitor your spam queue periodically.

 
That being said, despite the fact spammers are pests, I’m beginning to find the amusing factor in them. In my book site (yes, I have one) I have a forum system that’s never been truly adopted by the users (unfortunately), and so, there were more spam comments than real comments. For a while I played a game with them: I’d edit their spam messages to meaningful text. For example:

 
“Buy Xenadroxalix for $50” would change to “I really liked the Time Traveler’s wife. It was both romantic as well as creative. Truly a book for everyone”.

 
“Enlarge your ears for $25 using Vibralis” would change to “Not sure I agree with the previous commenter, I think it wasn’t a very good book. It just doesn’t make sense scientifically”.

 
Sometimes I’d even take it a degree further and just really mess with the comment. For example:

 
“Go to Kasinos and win thousands of dollars would change to “hey i like youre website but its could use some more reviews of books like jon gricham and things like that you know what im taking about?”.

 
Recently I got fed up, the game stopped amusing me. I’m going to just shut down that forum system.

 
But anyway, I’ve had enough experience with spammers that in this post I’d like to classify them to five categories:

 

  1. The mass linker: I don’t know what this type of spammer is thinking, but he posts massive comments with dozens or even hundreds of links, usually involving some sort of sexual or psychiatric drugs. That’s the classic spammer. It goes on like this “Xenadrioxi for $50. Venogra $50. Kialikx $80” only a hundred times.

     

  2. The innocent commenter: this type of spammer usually leaves innocent looking , yet very generic spammy comments. For example: “Interesting post, look forward for more”. “Thanks for the article, would like you to focus on this subject again”. And sometimes even something “subtler” “I disagree with the approach you took, there are many complex points you are not addressing” (Yes, I got the exact same comment on several unrelated sites that are located on different hosting accounts).

     
    Sometimes it’s even clear the spammer doesn’t know English, as the sentence looks like one that was translated using Google Translate (or an equivalent tool). I don’t remember how it went exactly, but I got one that said something like “Very decent information. Honour you!” (clearly translated, no?)

     

  3. The weird commenter: One of my sites started getting a lot of those. Usually they leave a meaningless comment and signature (with a link) at the end. For example: “How do you spell your surname?” “On one hand…, on the other hand…” “Where are you going?” “When is the next bus to the airport?” “It’s early yet!”. These five comments are real spam comments I got today (in fact, this is what made me write this article. This is just funny!).

     

  4. The massive spammer: this type of spammer is the worst: he just sends one of the above in massive amounts. I used to (naively) think I could deal with all spam myself. But when one of my sites started getting thousands of comments I gave up. Did I mention I really like Akismet?

     

  5. The foreign spammer: this type of spammer couldn’t care less about being detected. He leaves comments in other languages. For example, the forum I mentioned above started getting a lot of Russian comments. I had no idea what they meant (that is, until I used Google Translate – I think they were about alternative healing), but they were clearly spam.

 
I’m sure if I spend more time I can come up with more. Have you got any interesting spam story you’d be willing to share?

 
Edit: since I’ve created this I’ve discovered yet another type. This one – I think – is the most sophisticated spammer. It displays a generic comment, usually – but not always – a question but one that may be legitimately asked, often flattering. For example: “what a good domain name, what made you pick this one?” or (this one is a real example): “Ooh oops i just typed a long comment and as soon as i hit post it came up blank! Please please tell me it worked right? “. Another real one: “I wrote a similar blog regarding this subject but your is better”. They’re usually not really relevant to the post, but innocent looking that many blog owners may approve them because they appear valid. So.. be warned.

Ducks tend to use DoFollow

Ducks tend to use DoFollow


 
Continuing the title of this post, I don’t think this is really a question (maybe a rhetorical one). To me, the answer is clear: DoFollow. I just picked the title because I thought it’s amusing 😉

 
Yesterday I got a call from my good friend Miki Rapoport. He said “Dude, why are you using NoFollow links in your comments? How do you expect anyone to comment?” and I said “ehhm.. but I’m not!”. And then I remembered, WordPress’ default setting is NoFollow. This was purposely set up to discourage spammers (who won’t gain link benefits though they will get potential traffic). I’ve learned this a long, long time ago but well, haven’t really thought about it since then.

 
This was pretty annoying to find out and I’m glad Miki mentioned it to me. I’ve created dozens of websites, but this has always slipped my mind. And even though I often check the follow status of other websites, that’s not something I’ve ever done for my own sites!

 
Irritatingly, WordPress doesn’t offer a way to turn it off. However, multiple plugins exist for this very purpose. I repeatedly kept trying 3 Plugins (they all failed) until I found out that the theme I use hard-codes the nofollow links. Once I realized that’s the case it was a trivial thing to correct.

 
That being said, I tried one of the other plugins, the one that was my favorite, in another of my sites, and it worked like a charm.

 
The one I recommend is NoFollow Free, in particular because it is very configurable: you can set it so a number of comments a person makes are nofollow and after a threshold is reached it becomes dofollow. You can also set it so that certain words immediately trigger a nofollow. Pretty useful.

 
I also tested the other two, and they probably work as well (I don’t know because of my theme).

 
Highly recommended for people who want to give some ‘link juice’ to people who leave comments on their websites. The only concern is spammers, but that’s a different story (Akismet, how do I love thee? let me count the ways)

 
Now that my blog is setup for DoFollow, go ahead, leave a comment. I dare ya! 😉