3000 hits and counting…then there was spam - how to combat spammers
Published September 25th, 2005 in GeneralFame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door - Marlo Thomas
Oh the joys of anonymity! There once was a time (that would be pre my post on ‘Tips for writing content for your blog’) when I was but an insignificant blip in the blogosphere, but suddenly I was thrust into the limelight for a moment and now I get regularly spammed 
The downside of a popular post is spammers suddenly take notice of your site and from then on you have to delete their comments. Thankfully there are a couple of tips to help make life bearable if you are having spam problems (they’re pretty much dependent on using WordPress as you’ll see from point three, but at least there’s password required for leaving a comment:
1. Choose to put all comments with two or more hyperlinks into moderation - You still have to check the moderated list every couple of days to see if someone’s comment has been moderated by mistake, but a quick way to scan for this is that most spammers comments are the exact same.
2. Install a comment blacklist - Here’s mine:
online
adipex
advicer
texas hold’em
texas hold’em
ambien
bllogspot
carisoprodol
casino
casinos
baccarrat
cialis
cwas
cyclen
cyclobenzaprine
day-trading
discreetordering
dutyfree
duty-free
fioricet
freenet-shopping
incest
levitra
macinstruct
meridia
online-gambling
paxil
phentermine
platinum-celebs
poker-chip
poker
poze
prescription
soma
slot-machine
taboo
teen
tramadol
trim-spa
ultram
viagra
xanax
booker
zolus
chatroom
free online poker
online poker
That alone has saved me countless hours of heartache!
3. Use WordPress - I don’t care what anyone else says, but I have a decent blog setup and don’t attract the same amount of spam that I used to when using TypePad. WordPress have a consumer evengalist right right. By and large I get no spam, the interface is easy for people to use (i.e. no passwords required to leave comments) and it’s easy for me to manage my website.
Lord only knows how A-listers get by - most seem to have to resort to holding all comments in moderation until they are approved. Imagine if you were a reputable company and had porn spam in your comments! Spam is definitely the downside of blogging - being associated with the most dubious of websites! It’s bad enough putting your email address online, thanks be to God for Gmail’s spam filter.
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Yeah, I get spammed regularly these days.
Thanks for the list, I’ve been meaning to do up one myself but you’ve saved me the hassle.
Cheers.
just thinking out loud here: do you think if you post those words on the site, that it might make you fall foul of spam blockers, google’s pagerank and filters, etc?
juuust curious!
i always wonder that when i see people list their ‘funniest search strings” in their blogs. like “monkey butt shoe horn”, and then they post it on their site, and wonder outloud, ‘why are people coming here looking for “monkey butt shoehorns”?
so, similiarly, the listing of v*agra on your site may have made you all the more delectable to referrer spam.
i stopped using words talking about ch*ldren on my site, as if it was a dirty word, but i was getting in-bound links from the most unsavoury of places. kinda gross. we must be careful words appear on the page. or maybe i’m just paranoid. :/
Yeah I had considered that, but they’ll be put into my moderated pile. I’m only starting to get comment spam now and it’s all coming to my 13 Tips on writing content for your blog post. So my problem is really coming from being referred to, something I never even contemplated complaining about before
Just install http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/ and all your problems will go away. I can’t remember the last time I got any decent comment spam
I got hit as well:
http://www.freshideas.ie/blog/?p=73
I was going to use:
http://www.blueeye.us/wordpress/index.php?p=5
But I think I will give bad behaviour a spin.
Right looks like Heather was right and I’m getting the odd bit of spam sneaking through on this post so I’m going to turn off comments for this post now.