I don’t know if you have been noticing any changes in the comment spam caught on WordPress.com blogs by Akismet recently, so I thought I’d bring it to your attention since this blog is getting hammered by comment spammers, with few getting through, thank goodness.
Here are a few examples of some recent comment spam caught by Akismet:
Name: Liza
Good site. The answer пожалу?та on pair questions. It is the small test, I shall be grateful if will answer.
-how many you spend time on the Internet?
What for you the Internet means?Name: Gorga
What that problems.(I would like that you have corrected problems with scripts. And some menus do not work! del to it of attention. Thanks!Name: Alexander
This site is interesting and useful. Has come, was surprised with quantity of the information. Has added in the selected works, and I suggest you to exchange references. In advance thanks.Name: Alex
Badly with scripts. Not the convenient interface. And so a site interesting and useful. Has come, was surprised with quantity of the information. Has added in the selected works, and I suggest you to exchange references.Name: Yakov
And that if to add on a site a history of creation of a site?
Not only are the names and bad English very Russian, the comments could very possibly apply to this blog. A closer inspection found that all of these featured online casino web page links, clearly comment spam.
If you are not using Akismet, Bad Behavior, or Spam Karma 2 to protect your blog from comment spam trash and other nasties, then pay close attention to these kinds of comments because they can slip by you with their vaguely related comments. They are trash, evil, and must be destroyed, so look carefully and delete them to death when you find them.
Good hunting.
Site Search Tags: spam, comments, comment+spam, askimet, wordpress, bad+behavior, spam+karma
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen
Lorelle on WordPress 
9 Comments
Only just having got Akismet running on my main blog I was getting loads of moderation emails. The spam was pretty much similar to yours, except that I also got stuff like:
Mr Lewis Im talking to you! online casino throwin a party for him Can you provide some entertainment.
and
tray and walking away Oh no she couldnt be Marty sat down in a blackjack internet hallways.
These seem to be coming from a 209.190 IP address and thankfully Akismet is catching them all now 🙂
Oh, I have a fun post coming up soon with comments more closely related to what you are getting. I just jumped to point these out because a “casino party” is clearly comment spam, whereas questions about the Internet and scripts, well, that’s closer to home and could have slipped in if I weren’t paying attention and had good protection.
Ah, the joy of practicing safe blogging. 😉
I’m sick of moderating comment spam. I hardly post to my WP blog cause I am renovating my site at the moment. But I have to go in there frequently to delete garbage from casinos. Most are attached to old posts. I wish there was a better way to handle comment spam. Like having it all bounce back to them somehow. Or having their computer blow up… yes, a bit drastic but the evilness makes me feel better. 🙂
I’m with you on wanting evil, but we just must be smarter than the evil doers who plague us. Honestly, get Akismet, Bad Behavior, and/or Spam Karma and you will have much less work to do.
I haven’t gotten spam yet, hell I haven’t gotten any readers yet. But, my question is if I got in and make a comment on someone else’s site (that’s relevent of course) leaving my website address…is that spam?
oops. Forgive grammatical errors above. I am actually a good writer. I didn’t reread.
If you put your web/blog URL in a link or just “out there” in a comment, it is not considered spam, though it could be. It is considered bad form, though. Amateur. Most blogs put your URL/address in your “name” from the information you gave when you wrote the comment. So why have something like: tiiz says hi, there, tiiz. A bit redundant, eh?
Firstly, great blog… so much of interest and use on it.
And secondly, on to Askimet!! Until about 3 months or so ago Askimet span worked fine for me stopping 90%+ of spam and with what seemed high accuracy. Then over night everything changed. Askimet stopped catching spam and stopped being able to see what was and what was not spam.
I am sure that I do not get that much spam compared to some but comments on other sites such as read your spam comments are not really practical (I get several hundred a day and rising) and totally negate the point of having it in the first place.
Over the last day or two the stats were as follows…
Total comments & spam 359.
Awaiting moderation 174 – Spam 170, legitimate 4.
Askimet spam 185 – Spam 168, legitimate 7.
This would imply that Askimet is guessing and not that well at that. I have emailed Askimet to ask for advice but would be interested if anyone else has experienced a rapid change in fortunes with Askimet, what caused it and what the solution is…
@ Gavin Ingham:
Have you brought the issue up with Akismet? Spammers change their routines all the time and some gets in. It comes and goes as Akismet is a community-based effort. When you mark comment spam that gets through as comment spam, the information goes into a database which collects information from all the users. When X number of reports come about a specific comment spam, everyone using Akismet gets protection. It’s a learning curve, if you will. It sometimes take a little time as spammers keep trying to find ways around it and we keep finding comment spam worth marking as such, adding to the database.
Akismet is not “guess” but dependent upon everyone to submit what they see as comment spam appropriately. As Matt Mullenweg said at WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco recently, the problem isn’t that Akismet isn’t catching comment spam as fast as they create it, it’s that many see “legitimate” comments caught by Akismet and mark them as such when they are actually known comment spammers who are now well versed in the ability to fool us.
Also, check what you have set for your Moderation levels. You might want to change some of the settings.
If it bothers you, add another comment spam protection Plugin. Do not add CAPTCHA as that has been proven repeatedly not to work and only angers users, but why not add Defensio or one of the other comment spam Plugins. That way, you have two working for you instead of just one.
Though I only have Akismet on this blog and trust me, I get THOUSANDS of comment spam EVERY day and only a very few get through. It’s a hassle to pick out 10-20 comment spam daily, but against the over 900 waiting for me this morning in Akismet, I’m okay with that. 😀
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