Blog spam is relentless

Since I implemented comment and trackback moderation on this blog a couple of weeks ago, the amount of spam I've been getting has steadily increased. Now it's averaging between three and five such hits every day. May not sound much at all in the context of the overall blogosphere, but that adds up to at least 21 a week, 84 a month and over 1,000 a year. Multiply that by just 1,000 of the 14 million or so other English-language blogs out there and you can see the scale of this problem.

The current average will go up a bit now as yesterday I received 12 in one day, all re sex and pills from the same spammer at IP address 84.242.95.27 which, according to the nifty ForMyIP.com, is located in the Czech Republic and belongs to an ISP called Karneval Media S.R.O. Needless to say, he's now a banned IP address.

What's good, though, is that none of the crap will ever see the light of day on this blog because of moderation, part of the raft of service enhancements for TypePad blogs implemented by Six Apart last month. It is a bit time-consuming to have to go into TypePad and delete the stuff from the pending queue, not to mention wasted bandwidth usage, but that's preferable to having to do it after the event which would be the case without moderation.

What I find a bit curious is that nearly all spam during the past month or so has been targeting posts I've written during the first quarter of this year; hardly any spam aimed at recent posts. Is that signficant of anything? Maybe the spammers or the auto-senders think older posts are less likely to be on the current radar screen of the blogger. But I really have no idea!

I'm sure we'll see more bloggers putting up defensive walls though devices like comment and trackback moderation as well as with some intelligent tools that can filter inbound comments and trackbacks looking for key phrases and other indicators of spam.

It doesn't stop the spam but at least with such protective measure in place, you get the satisfaction in knowing that your blog won't be an unwitting channel for these odious peddlers.

Comments

[dahowlett]

I too am trying to get to the bottom of blog related spam. Comment moderation works well (in MT) but trackback spam is where the real damage gets done. Somehow, rogue ISPs have managed to latch onto email addresses of MT authors and are relentlessly pinging old posts - presumably in an attempt to get people to visit their poker, Viagra or porn sites. Looks like I need yet another plug-in...

[Tom Keefe]

I've noticed that several posts I added several months ago to the IABC Cafe blog are just now getting the attention of spam comments. I wish we didn't have to be in a defensive posture with spammers, finding ways to keep them out, rather than making it too painful for them to spam in the first place.

[Nevon]

Dennis, one thing I like in the new MT version 3.2 is the new feedback scoring system as part of automating a more effective way of dealing with spam of all types. Info here:

http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/weblog/2005/07/movable_type_3.html

Doesn't stop the spam but it makes dealing with it a lot easier.

Tom, I don't think anyone knows how to actually stop spam. or if it can be stopped. I don't think it can be. Part of life.

[Michael P. Whelan]

Thankyou for the very informative and helpful post. I have not encountered this problem as yet, but as time and content move forward it is essential that steps be taken and you have illuminated some essential measures.
Michael P. Whelan

[Blake]

I dont use movable type, but I have noticed that every time I put up a new post - I am instantly struck with 2 or 3 spam comments. It's like there watching me and waiting to pry into my comment box. Those little spam critters are getting smarter each day. Uggh.

[dahowlett]

Useful conversation this. Problem comes when you want to make a blog pitch to corporates. Unless it's behind the firewall, it gets tough pretty quick. Loic acknowledges this but the developers have got to find a solution that doesn't involve a huge amount of what amounts to site maintenance.

[David Craig]

I think the reason why people spammed your posts from the first quarter of this year is because those are pages already indexed by Google and have been given some page rank. People out there think this will help them with their own website ranking. I don’t think signing guest books works at all - just annoys people. It’s a bit desperate. By the way this site rocks!

Dave

[Darla]

I get one or two spam posts a day, and it's usually the most recent post or two. Very annoying, I use blogspot (blogger) and wonder if anyone has any tips how to combat it in that blog-engine.

One time, I actually took the time to look up the spammer's website on WHOIS by the URL, and used the email address there to email him and tell him I deleted his post and that I did NOT appreciate him spamming my blog. Amazingly, he emailed me back to apologize, but I would bet my blog that he's spamming someone today.

[Charles]

It's slightly more complicated than David says, though he's close.
1) old posts get spammed because people who are lazy are less likely to check them. If they don't review all their comments, those old posts should remain undisturbed.
2) When Googlebot comes along and asks if anything's changed on the site, the server will say "Yes! We've got these links to this site!" Bam, there goes the spam to be indexed by Google.

Forcing "rel=nofollow" on links is thought by some to ease this, but in fact the spammers don't care. They'll hit your blog regardless, because you might not have done it.

Think of it as being like an infestation of something - fleas, cockroaches, whatever you like - and of your blog as a living thing it's trying to infest. It'll go for the unregarded corners.

I did an article on this for The Register talking to a link spammer - Google on "Register link spammer".