Cracking Down On Handcrafted Comment Spam
It’s only fair to let everybody know that I’ve been having to crack down on handcrafted comment spam lately. I think the sex toy sellers are getting desperate for free traffic.
What I’m seeing a lot of (as in, many per day) is short comments, obviously written by a real human, responsive to the post on which they appear, and in all respects the sort of comment that I would normally value (except that, generally, they aren’t very substantive or interesting). And then, in the URL box that gets published with the comment, a long and ugly keyword-stuffed link to a sex toy sales page.
I’m not talking about the obviously-machine-generated stuff (“Hi, I did a Google search and found that most people would agree with you”) or the lazily banal one-word comments (“Hott!”). Those have been with us for years, and I moderate away dozens per day. This new plague consists of longer (but still short) comments that react to the posts in human ways (a recent one was similar to “Wow, it must take a lot of coordination to bring somebody off with your feet like that”), with a link in the URL box in the style of “http://amazing-sex-toys21.com/vibrator-massager-orgasms.html”).
I’ve always gotten a few of these, and I used to moderate them in a way that preserved the comment while refusing to provide the free advertising. I’d edit the comment, strip out the link, pass the comment through moderation, and add the commenter to the “always moderate comments from this source” list. Once or twice a week, it wasn’t too bad. But now, it’s half a dozen times a day, and I haven’t got that kind of time.
I used to think that the spam wars would be lost, if they are, to machine algorithms that got better and better at pretending to be people. And I still worry about that. But I now I also wonder whether the difficult economic times aren’t showing us a glimpse of a distopian future in which infotech is so cheap, and people are so hungry, that handcrafted and human-generated spam begins to make widespread economic sense. If that’s the way it goes, we won’t be winning the spam wars any time soon.
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When you say it comes with a link, do you mean they put it in their comment directly, or they put it in the ‘website’ box in the comment form, thus making it the link off their name? If it’s the former, okay, that’s irritating, but if it’s the latter, that seems pretty harmless.
Have you seen the latest xkcd strip which is about this same topic?
http://xkcd.com.../632
And no, it’s not a pointer to a sex toy. :-)
You will need to moderate this link, but honestly, it is relevant and amusing:
latest xkcd
I’ve sometimes wondered how many of the people making harassing phone calls for credit companies are behind in their own payments. I’ve noticed an increase in phone spam things. The DNC registry seemed to work fine for me until the last few weeks. Hadn’t thought the rise in calls and text ads might be related to general unemployment. Certainly seems logical, though depressing.
Awesome xkcd, thanks ever so much for the pointer! It’s almost scarily apt.
Patrick, they make it the link off their name — except, usually they also set their name to be some sort of keyword that they are trying to optimize in the search engines. So, the comment will look good, but it will be left by somebody named “the best vibrators” at http://www.buzz....html.
I’m not trashing sex toy sellers here — they are some of my most loyal advertisers. Which is sort of the point, I’d rather they bought an ad instead of trying to think up an insincere commercially motivated comment.
This is one big reason why I love WordPress. While I do have a domain name for myself, I use wordpress.org to publish. In amongst the many widgets and such is something called Askimet.
I would say that about 1 comment a week pops on through that is spam and Askimet didn’t catch. Perhaps 2 a month Askimet filters out that were not truly spam.
I’m doing now what you used to do. They’re leaving a LOT on Jane’s Guide in the sex toy reviews, go figure.
I always feel guilty nixing their URLs since they took the time to construct a cogent comment. But not guilty enough to leave the link. :)
FWIW, I have noticed that such comments (yes, even non-sex blogs get them too) originate in places like Manilla and Bangalore.
So, yes, “handcrafted and human-generated spam begins to make widespread economic sense” is what is happening, I suspect.
Those handcrafted comment spam offer me a great rewriting opportunity for me to “populate” my lonely, unloved blog with comments about such things like risqué photos of old Japan.
You are lucky your nemesis is sex toy comment spammers—My sex blog attracts totally incomprehensible comments about buying GOLDen [showers] for online gaming.
One important hint to anybody else who rewrites handcrafted comment spam—Remember to subtly alter the comment spammer’s name and email address with random spacing or alternate spelling.
If you only just remove the spam’s URL, anti-comment spam software like Askimet for WordPress will start approving all the posts for repeat-offender comment spammer SINCE they appear to be big fan of your website who makes many comments.
I’ve been getting this variety of comment spam at my blog for awhile, but I’ve never posted any of it. As you said, it’s either irrelevant or inappropriate to the post anyway. My spam filter detects most of it, but one occasionally makes it through to regular moderation.