JonesPC

Every since I started using Wordpress, I have seen some weird spam. Some I have to say is very creative. Not the content in the spam, some of that is down right disgusting. Its the way the spammers try to get around the spam filters (thanks for Askimet). The spam Im talking about comes via comments. Spammers try to write comments linking to their porn or whatever other spam that they are trying to pass.

At first I I just noticed the regular spam that would say something like "HI" then loads of links, like 20 or 30 links, all pointing to different websites that I definitely don’t want to be linked too. That never gets anywhere. The main reason is because the default Wordpress setting for comments is to hold all comments with 2 or more links for moderation. Askimet usually just put those comments in the spam bin for me to delete later. Sometimes I will look at all of those items of spam in my spam folder and wonder why do they ever continue to try that method. Sometimes, the same person will try 4 or 5 times a day.

The other type of spam I see is when there is a comment that really makes no sense, but the URL they put associated with their name is pointing to porn. That would be harder to detect but the comment usually gives it away. The blog post could be about Google, then I read a comment like "Nice post, my brother has 2 of those and I was thinking about getting one myself". Absolutely nothing to do with the blog post so that makes me think "Hmm" and of coarse the URL associated with the name of the commenter will be a porn site.

Today I saw something that I hadn’t seen before, Or maybe I just didn’t notice it before. There was a very genuine comment on a blog post. you can tell the commenter actually read the post and wrote a comment that completely fit in with the post. Askimet didn’t catch it, but Wordpress labeled the held the comment for moderation. I looked at it, and thought it was a legit comment, to make sure I hovered over the URL and it went to what I thought was a legitimate travel website. Something told me to look further so I clicked on the URL and it took me to what looked like a legitimate travel website that listed airfare prices. I looked a little closer and noticed every link on the site that was suppose to take you to airfare prices for that particular flight actually was linked to porn. This guy put a lot of work in this, but it didn’t get by.

It did teach me a lesson. I cant get slack and think Askimet is going to always save my from spammers.