A Sampling of How Akismet Flags Comment Spam
A while back I wrote about some of the spam comments I have gotten on this site. According to the plug-in, Akismet, which WordPress provides me, I have had 18,202 spam comments intercepted by them. By the way, I use WordPress “dot com”, not “dot org”, though I have been considering moving over. I have been very happy with WordPress’s offering and it’s really tough to beat the price.
After I wrote that particular post, the number of spam comments I received seemed to level off at a tolerable rate; sometimes going for days with no flagged activity. However, during this holiday season it picked up dramatically and, in the past month I have probably been protected from a couple hundred spam comments. I think the biggest violator of my space has been Ugg boots (which hasn’t gone unnoticed by others), followed at a distance by Louis Vuitton. I have permanently deleted, collectively, a long essay’s worth of Cyrillic, some Chinese, a smattering of Hebrew, and quite a few short stories that made absolutely no sense at all. Invariably, the writing is atrocious. The most entertaining are the ones that seek to praise my writing style or the organization of the “site”, etc., presumably to flatter me so I won’t want to delete the comment. Fat chance!
At any rate, I took a partial screenshot of some of the latest (they’re coming in at a furious pace lately) before I deleted them. I’m including it so you can see what I see. I imagine each one of these represents a person who has been suckered into paying money for these attempted backlinks, though my knowledge of SEO (especially “Black Hat SEO“) is insufficient to be sure I fully understand why so many would continue doing this sort of thing.
I guess I’m naive. Fortunately, I’m not terribly gullible.
PS – To all my readers, thank you so much for taking the time to come here. I wish you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. May 2012 bring you greater joy and contentment than you have enjoyed previously, and less damn fools to darken your doorstep 😦
About Rick Ladd
I retired over14 years ago, though I've continued to work on and off since then. Mostly I'm just cruising, making the most of what time I have remaining.
Although my time is nearly up, I still care deeply about the kind of world I'll be leaving to those who follow me and, to that end, I am devoted to seeing the forces of repression and authoritarianism are at least held at bay, if not crushed out of existence.
I write about things that interest me and, as an eclectic soul, my interests run the gamut from science to spirituality, governance to economics, art and engineering. I'm hopeful one day my children will read what I've left behind.
View all posts by Rick Ladd
Systems Savvy 
Another Visit to Spamalot
A Sampling of How Akismet Flags Comment Spam
A while back I wrote about some of the spam comments I have gotten on this site. According to the plug-in, Akismet, which WordPress provides me, I have had 18,202 spam comments intercepted by them. By the way, I use WordPress “dot com”, not “dot org”, though I have been considering moving over. I have been very happy with WordPress’s offering and it’s really tough to beat the price.
After I wrote that particular post, the number of spam comments I received seemed to level off at a tolerable rate; sometimes going for days with no flagged activity. However, during this holiday season it picked up dramatically and, in the past month I have probably been protected from a couple hundred spam comments. I think the biggest violator of my space has been Ugg boots (which hasn’t gone unnoticed by others), followed at a distance by Louis Vuitton. I have permanently deleted, collectively, a long essay’s worth of Cyrillic, some Chinese, a smattering of Hebrew, and quite a few short stories that made absolutely no sense at all. Invariably, the writing is atrocious. The most entertaining are the ones that seek to praise my writing style or the organization of the “site”, etc., presumably to flatter me so I won’t want to delete the comment. Fat chance!
At any rate, I took a partial screenshot of some of the latest (they’re coming in at a furious pace lately) before I deleted them. I’m including it so you can see what I see. I imagine each one of these represents a person who has been suckered into paying money for these attempted backlinks, though my knowledge of SEO (especially “Black Hat SEO“) is insufficient to be sure I fully understand why so many would continue doing this sort of thing.
I guess I’m naive. Fortunately, I’m not terribly gullible.
PS – To all my readers, thank you so much for taking the time to come here. I wish you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. May 2012 bring you greater joy and contentment than you have enjoyed previously, and less damn fools to darken your doorstep 😦
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