Another Spam Commenting Technique You Should be Aware of
Well last night, I was going through my spam folder which was about 340 some comments. I came across a few known names. Well these names were my regular readers specially those who are in my top commentator’s list. So without noticing, I de-spammed those comments. Usually what I do is, I de-spam the comment if it sounds genuine, and then when I go to the comment page, I try to reply to them.
The reason why I marked them not spam was because I know these were my regular readers. They each had a new website, so I thought they just started a new website and want to promote that. Since I was going through 340 comments, I was sort of rushing. So I didn’t check which IP address this comment was from.
Now here we are talking about multiple comments about 12 that were from my regular readers, or so I thought. Silvia, Ann Harbor Web Design, and Nicole Price. If you notice they are actually in my top commentator list. They are ranked among the top 3.
Well after I marked them not spam along with a lot others, I came back to reply to them. These comments were so genuine, but they were all on one post. So the spammer basically replied about my recent posts, on one of my very high ranked / good PR post with different links. Now since the comments were about recent posts, I didn’t think it was spam.
But when I saw all 12 comments were on that one post, I realized I was caught in a spam trap. Anyways, I had to mark those comments as spam again.
I did notice that they were all from the same IP, just different emails after the fact. So I eneded up disallowing that IP Address.
But that was a clever technique whoever tried. It got me for a few minutes, but than I realized, so next time try harder.
I thought I should let you guys know if you get something like this, so you know what to do.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
Thank God that you investigated and got my name cleared. My only problem with this post is that for a moment, it sounded as though you thought that I along with the other two top posters were spammers. I investigated and found that all three of us have different IPs and so was relieved.
Haha no I would’ve known if you were a spammer by now. Someone else tried to use your name and spam.
This is amazing (awful amazing not great amazing). And just by the way it’s Ann Arbor (not Harbor) Web design.
Thanks for sorting out that one.
Lol that is what the spammer put and got me. I wasn’t looking all carefully because there were another 100 or so I had to look for.
I have got so many same spam comments and I notice they are from same ip address too. Yeah they also used the different email. Lucky there is API to get rid of spam!
This is a sneeky way to add comments that i have seen before. Spammers will try anything so you always have to be on the look out.
I wasn’t aware of this before, thanks for putting out the thing so I stay updated with spammers!
Well i guess that it was a good thing that I got bumped down on the top commentators other wise I would have been the butt of this joke.
Yeah I hate spammers. Unfortunately I have to install the captcha system to make these go away
A small price to pay for my commentators but it gives me 1-2 spam a day instead of hundreds
This is common for my blog as well. Some of them will post two to three comments on a single post to increase their position on the top commentators plugin. If I see the comments aren’t of any substance, I usually delete them
Man, those posts had to be pretty good if they fooled you like that. I haven’t gotten anything of that sort, but I’ll sure be watching out for them.
Yes these were about 3 sentences paragraph and they were good.
that is really genius i never thought of this before usually i never check ip, but i wonder why they spam of these new posts anyway it’s not ranked yet and i guess ur blog is nofollow right?
What they were doing was commenting about my new posts, but on one of my highly ranked older posts. And akismet says view post, which I never does as long as the comment talks about something legit. I read their comments and they were good 3 line comments.
hallo , my first comment here, i heard about this spamming much but Syed i advice you to leave akismet do it because akismet is strong spam plugin .
I do have akismet there, but sometimes my reader’s comment get stuck in akismet. It has happened multiple times before. New users don’t even get a chance to post because akismet catches it. So I manually review them in Akismet section.
Wow! Thanks for posting about this, I had not heard about this technique yet. Spam is such a pain in the behind. I guess they somehow make money spamming people, but I just can’t relate to wanting to advertise when people have made it so clear that they don’t want you. I currently use Akismet and WP-Ban and the two programs catch about 1 thousand spams a week.
If I see the comments aren’t of any substance, I usually delete them!
I usually delete them too but they seemed real except they were just all on that one post. So basically comment regarding this post on one of my higher ranked posts.
what spam filter do you use?
maybe you should use other comment engines like disqus comment.
Well, it seems akismet was very smart in this case.. Smarter then a spammer who used really interesting technique. I can’t believe they have time for such diversions.
That is a pretty smart technique. Spammers are evolving and becoming smarter and smarter every day. That’s why anti spam technology is also evolving to fight it and stop it.
I’ve been getting a lot of blog spam like that lately – The ones that are hard to catch reference something in the post, or a comment made by someone else. Once I notice it, I go back through the approved comments and delete the ones that made it through – they should have quit while they were ahead!
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Jeez, 340 spam comments a day. I get around 100, although akismet catches and automatically removes about 90% of them. Anyway, I saw this technique mentioned on another blog in the past. Forgot which one.
I love askimet for spam control. My general policy is that if it goes in askimet it is deleted. Anything that does not go in there I check prior to approving the comment as some spammy comments can get through askimet. Some days askimet filters out comments well into the triple digits.
That was clever trick. and Thumbs up to you Syed for catching it. hehe