- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
The spammers took their games up another notch today with a new type of blog spam that scrapes one of the blogger’s own comments and/or someone else’s real comment and reposts it as a “new” comment in the same post. This makes the comments seem relevant to the post and might result in their slipping them more successfully into blogs.
Wouldn’t you think someone sharp enough to do such a thing could find a more productive way to spend their time?
The good news is Akismet DID flag these as spam. Perhaps they’ve already adapted to defeat this challenge. I am sharing this here because it is likely that a blogger may “rescue” a comment of this type because it IS highly relevant to the post in which it appears.
Here are two examples of this new strategy that appeared today in two of the more popular blog posts here:
In our popular DoFollow Lists of Blogs, Social Networking Sites and Forums; DoFollow Search Tool; Understanding Do Follow, No Follow that mentions PageRush and has a comment from the developer of that program we deleted this:
My long term vision for PageRush is to maintain a list of keywords that you are interested in. By searching for all of the keyword phrases Page Rush will identify niche blogs you should be commenting on (do follow or otherwise). If you have any posts related to any you see here do please share the links. I periodically move them up into the body of posts or decide a new post featuring new information is more applicable.I use seo quake to find out if sites are do-follow. If they are no-follow a line is placed through the link. I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made in writing this article. I am hoping the same best work from you in the future as well. In fact your creative writing abilities has inspired me.
The part in italics was scraped from a comment made by Adam from PageRush. The part in bold was scraped from one of my replies further down the page. The last few sentences are original to the spammer. Here is another example, this time from REVIEW: Mastering Google Analytics – Easy to Understand FREE eCourse :
We can increase our income if we learn more about first analytics and then split testing. Even if we don’t hone those kinds of advanced skills there are simple things to learn like seeing where your visitors go on your site and using the overlay feature originated by Click Tracks. I still hope to be blogging by then and perhaps the extra time on my hand can be consumed by analyzing those boring stats. Of course, if I become a blogging millionaire I will be too busy touring the world finding interesting tales to blog about. I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made in writing this article. I am hoping the same best work from you in the future as well. In fact your creative writing abilities has inspired me.
In this example the bold was scraped from one of my comment replies, the italics is from a comment made by Sire of the WassupBlog For Blogging Tips who regularly comments here and the last few sentences are the same as in the other example. [NOTE: Sire’s blog is one to subscribe to, read and comment in as he is very active across the blogosphere.]
DEALING WITH BLOG SPAM:
A combination of Akismet and Math, Akismet and Captcha, or Akismet and NoSpamNX are the best solutions I’ve come across so far. I just found NoSpamNX and may test it in the near future.
Wouldn’t it be great if spammers would take up honest work?
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Gail Gardner
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spammers have been creative but not creative enough..hoooray for Akismet
How cool is it that you solved this problem for everybody on WP!
Getting Andy to make G.A.S.P. has made this problem disappear.
The only problem is when it happens manually.
Like the virtual assistans and “seo” people hired in India. I’m not saying all of them are bad, there are some bad apples. Of course there are spammers like that in every country with internet access. ( I wonder if there is a country without internet access :S)
Danny would love you to read ..Poulan Pro PP446ET 8-Inch Gas Powered Pole Chain Saw
my marketing email is linked directly to my cellphone…a huge mistake when you do not have spam under control. Fortunately, life got a lot better once I installed spam free plugin. Sometimes I get frustrated and just bundle delete all the comments…LOL
come check out the blog I am working out at the moment: Tattoo Removal
This simply is very disturbing among bloggers. But I think there are some anti spam apps now that can do the work for scraping others comment and block them.
Hi There!
I just wanted to say that I am really impressed with your plugin. I have seen a huge decrease in spams compared to using Akismet. I would certainly use your plugin for all my sites and recommend it to my friends.
Regards,
Christine
Thank you Growmap! I have seen this on my site and have installed the plugin! Lets see if it works to keep these guys out!
Jake would love you to read ..Rapid Cash Tornado Bonus
No, Edmund, it is NOT a good thing that Akismet is automatically installed in blogs. It does not control spam well because:
1) It lets tons of spambot comments through
2) It throws high quality into spam.
Wise bloggers are deleting Akismet and installing other methods for controlling spam including our GrowMap anti-spambot plugin as explained at that link.
growmap would love you to read ..GrowMap Anti-SpamBot Plugin Testimonials
Yaa its true Akismet blocks spam comments but it also blocks genuine comments. They are updating the plugin rapidly so we can expect a great version very soon
Thanks for posting
Yes, Dainik, Akismet does block genuine comments and I have heard NOTHING about them fixing that problem. They may update their plugin but it is doubtful they will change the basic way it works.
See the testimonials and consider using our plugin instead of Akismet.
growmap would love you to read ..GrowMap Anti-SpamBot Plugin Testimonials
Gail, I have seen the precursors to this type of spam: the spammer scraped only an exact duplicate of one of my own comments.
Apparently, the spammers are becoming more sophisticated. There is an amateur version of this (or maybe it is not related) where the spammer slaps a generic comment and punctuates it with a tilde. Apparently the tilde is some kind of terminator. It’s a dead-giveaway that it’s spam: paste the comment into Google as an exact phrase and you’ll see it pop up all over the blogosphere!
Cheers,
Mitch
.-= Mitchell Allen´s featured blog ..To Have and To Hold ‘Til Deft Filters Part =-.
Hi Mitchell,
Sorry for the late rely. I am now so busy that I answer comments as I can that don’t contain questions which I try to answer quickly.
Spammers copy text from our posts, our comments, other sites – apparently thinking that anything that is written in English will be better than what non-English speaking workers can write themselves.
I also use a search engine to decide what is spam. I am just thankful for G.A.S.P. blocking all the bots!
growmap would love you to read ..GrowMap Anti-SpamBot Plugin Testimonials
I’ve been using just Askimet for a while on all my blogs, and it seems to work like a champ. I’ve never found any “real” comments that got flagged, and only a small handful (less than say 5) made it through.
Hi Steve,
Akismet has so many of our regular readers and commentators flagged as spammers now that we disabled it in this and our other blogs. See the many posts I’ve done recently on the issues with Akismet.
.-= growmap´s featured blog ..Akismet Deletes Comments Bloggers NEVER SEE! =-.
Hi Chat,
You might be right there. Akismet should have blacklist and whitelist features. I am still getting spam even with math and Akismet so it is obvious I need to add something else. I’ll have to check into Defensio and Raven too.
Internet Strategist’s last blog post..How to Create a Successful Blog Based Business Part 1
Hey Internet Strategist, Ironically, you just suffered the type of spam you were talking about in post! See my comment above ( anchored #comment-5876 ). Chat just copied. You should delete this.
Spammers can do anything to get links, and this one got it!
Mr. I’s last blog post..Free Report: Commenting Guide For Bloggers
Thanks for the heads up. I did delete that comment.
an interesting discussion about the spammers, but I can not join to comment about the spam because I have not much to know it and I still really a beginner in the blogging world.
thank you for a very informative article
If you’re new to blogging there is so much still to learn. If you have any particular questions you need answered feel free to ask. Asking directly is a much faster way to get just the answer you need when you need it. Blogger’s needs do change as their goals change.
Internet Strategist’s last blog post..WordPress 2.7 Threaded Comments Works In Thesis
It does not surprise me that they are using this copy and paste strategy. Many of those that do blog comments are with companies overseas and the employees do not have a great grasp of the language. But they can copy and paste into comments so it is not apparent.
Do you have any evidence these are manually generated? They could be or they could be smart spambots. Looks like it is time for us to use something that makes sure the bots can’t comment.
Internet Strategist’s last blog post..Promote Your Business Without Cash
I do not use Akismet any more. For me, it never showed any signs of learning. I use Defensio + Raven Anti Spam combo and they work great. Defensio already takes duplicate comments into consideration and makes job easier for me. Also, since Raven stops most spam bots, I see comments only by stupid people saying “great post, can I subcribe”, “how can I subscribe?”
Mr. I’s last blog post..Beware! Your Comments are Being Hijacked
Thank you for sharing what works best for you. We are always researching and do plan to implement another spam solution in the very near future. Wading through spam in Akismet to rescue the few that are real comments is a waste of time.
Internet Strategist’s last blog post..Do YOUR Blogging Goals Include Monetization: Benefits Our Readers Receive
thanks for pointing me toward those scrape-busting techniques. Personally, I find that one of the most frustrating things… When I write something 450-500 words long and seeing someone else scrape it and get link love that ought to be mine.
These won’t help too much with that kind of scraping. I often wonder if any of those sites that use excerpts of our posts and send trackbacks / pingbacks send us any traffic or are good for anything at all besides generating ad revenue for them.
I do know that those sites and all the parked domains full of ads are a waste of bandwidth and domain names. If I were King of the Internet I’d ban them all – but I’m more of a live and let live type who wants freedom for all so I guess we’ll just have to put up with them.
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@tom Oh no, Tom it wouldn’t. That is where computers far exceed the capabilities of a human. They write a program that sends out hundreds or even thousands of spam comments in minutes. They’re going for numbers knowing that if they send out enough some percentage will go live in sites and forums. They especially target lists of dofollow blogs.
I suspect they just grab complete sentences and put them together. I am not a programmer myself but know quite a bit about it and suspect a program could be written that grabs everything between two periods one or more times, then appends a new message, and posts the entire thing. Anything scraped from a particular post is likely to be relevant to that post.
@Dennis Thanks for answering. Few really how much can be automated. I personally know someone who makes multiple six figures because he knows how to automate almost anything online.
Yes, some are buying packages that teach them to be spammers and others are working as spammers. Many of those have no idea what they’re actually doing or why spamming is unethical because it steals time and resources from those who are targeted.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Do YOUR Blogging Goals Include Monetization: Benefits Our Readers Receive
@The Almost Millionaire – the multiple link spammers that Akismet catches so well are wasting no time as it’s all automated.
The human ones are the saddest, a lot of times these are newbies that are actually taught, and in some cases sold packages by “guru’s”, to do this.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..100 Marketers Give 100 Strategies – Recommended!
I wonder if it really saves them that much time though. I mean wouldn’t it be easier to just write your own thoughts on the subject than to find kinda relevant sentences, mix and match them so that make at least some sense and then just paste them in the comment field?
@Mohammed We do use Akismet and this blog would be awash in spam comments if we didn’t. It takes both Akismet plus another plugin to really handle it well though. The most promising solutions are at the end of this blog post. We’ll probably be adding NoSpamNX unless further research turns up any drawbacks.
@Salwa Aren’t they though! The reason I’m looking at using both Akismet and another plugin is to reduce the wasted time going through the comments. Akismet flags a couple real comments as spam just about every day and I don’t want to lose those.
@Steve Thanks for the tip. Have you looked at NoSpamNX? I’ll check out Bad Behavior too.
Thank you all for taking the time to comment and for adding your Twitter IDs. I do check to make sure I’m following all those who comment here and I share their posts at Twitter, FriendFeed, and cliKball.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Promote Your Business Without Cash
I think the spammers would be smarter to leave that last part off. That to me is a dead giveaway for anyone that reads their comments.
BTW, I started using Bad Behavior with Akismet a few weeks ago, and it rocks. It block “bad people” from even getting to your blog. You may want to check it out. My akismet stuff to check is back down to a trickle again thanks to Bad Behavior. ~ Steve, the trade show guru
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OHH SPAMS ARE JUST SO ANNOYYYIIINNG ! however Akismet has really worked for me in blocking spams on my blog.
Salwa’s last blog post..Traffic Monday: Driving Traffic Using Article Marketing Techniques
i used dofollow plugin on my blog but after i recived much spam comments i decide to remove it , but if you want my advice , use Akismet it block all spammers .
This has been going on for a while from my understanding, it’s quite unfortunate, but at least askimet catches it now.
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@Dennis We’re going to test the WP option first. If that doesn’t work well enough we’ll use the plugin.
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I use a plugin, not the WP option. But then I’m still on 2.6.5
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Business Mentors, Advisers & Coaches
@Dennis Whoa indeed. Derek finally had time to install Thesis and we’re modifying it as time allows. Glad you like it. Turning on threaded comments is at the top of the priority list now. I would do it if I had a clue how. I hope it works fine now as I heard it wasn’t great when WP first added it as an option.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Do YOUR Blogging Goals Include Monetization: Benefits Our Readers Receive
Well my first thought was, whoa WTH, new theme? That was a bit of a surprise, but I like it. 🙂 Hmm threaded comments, now there’s an idea… 😉
I believe it was Batman who first said it best….if they could only use their power for good instead of evil.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Business Mentors, Advisers & Coaches
@Mitch Derek tells me he will turn on threaded comments in WP. I would do it if I had any idea where it was and knew it wouldn’t cause other issues. I leave the technical details to others so I can focus on writing and driving traffic.
Have you checked the Gravatar site to see if they have a report bad actors function? Maybe they’re on Twitter and you could suggest it there? Oh, and did you change the look or colors in your blog?
@Sire Blogging IS like chess; there are infinite moves to make and only the player/blogger knows which THEY believe will lead them furthest towards a win.
@Gagan The more individual comments they skim from the more likely their comments will not make sense so the way they’re doing it is pretty smart except that using the same last few sentences are probably what got them caught.
I just wish spammers would take up something productive to do. It is highly likely that they are selling traffic to unsuspecting businesses who have no idea where it comes from or what they’re involved in.
@Brian I would vote for sophisticated bot; however, it could be either. I’m sure the spammers think they’re very clever as do the people who set up pay to surf sites. They’re just not considering those their schemes damage.
@Matt I’m sure they’d love all those royalties. How’s the wedding biz this year? What months are your busiest? As you probably know a friend of ours has a Gift Store that sells Wedding related Groomsmen Gifts so knowing when the peak is will assist me in getting him more business. Did you see we added a box for his store in the left column of our new design?
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Why You Can NOT Rely Solely on Organic Search Listings for Traffic and Revenue
Spam– Spam — Spam — Spam……….those folks at Monty Python should get a royalty every time the word comes up in a blog article! (LOL)
Wow, this is completely new to me. I wonder if it’s a sophisticated bot doing this or just clever spammers doing it manually. I haven’t seen it on my blogs yet but at least now I know to be on the lookout for it.
I agree with you question/statement. “Wouldn’t you think someone sharp enough to do such a thing could find a more productive way to spend their time?”. That’s something I’ve wondered for a long time.
Brian D. Hawkins’s last blog post..ClickBank Niche Sites – Quick and Easy DIY
wow a new kind of spam what you think would be a next level of spam picking phrases from all comments or from original article and then posting it
Yep, and what an interesting couple of games we are having. I’ve been trying to think of a ‘blogging is like chess’ angle for a post but can’t quite get it right.
Sire’s last blog post..The Differences Between Male And Female
Yeah Mitch, first you come up with ‘sneaky Sire, and then with a commenting thing, what’s with that? Are you staying up way too late mate? Everyone knows how lovable I am, definitely not sneaky 😀
Sire’s last blog post..Blogging As A Source Of Information
Oh Sire, didn’t see you there. lol And based on how late we were playing chess last night, you know the answer to that question.
Mitch’s last blog post..Thoughts On Facebook – The Followup
Yes, a threaded comments thing; I couldn’t think of it when I was writing.
As for the other, spammers don’t worry about creating new accounts all the time; that’s the thing. That takes time, and gets in the way of spamming. None of those folks have Gravatars; it’s the people who are intentionally spamming by buying software that we’d be going after.
Hey, gotta start somewhere, right?
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Surprise. Threaded comments just for you (and everyone else who has asked) and especially for me so I don’t miss answering anyone’s comments.
growmap’s last blog post..Promote Your Business Without Cash
Yay! Nice job, and this will make things so, so much easier. 🙂
Mitch’s last blog post..Linkshare
Yeah, it’s not like I have inferred on many occasions how I would like threaded comments, but you go and listen to Mitch instead. Now if that isn’t favoritism 😀
Sire’s last blog post..What Search Terms Are People Using To Find You
I told you on my blog that you had power; I didn’t say it was absolute 😉
Mitch’s last blog post..Grabbing For More Twitter Followers?
Yeah, but I’m working on it LOL
Sire’s last blog post..The SEO Importance Of Permalinks
Mitch, based on running forums for quite a few years, and having been involved in “creative marketing” coding with Yahoo groups in the far past (emphasis on past), I can tell you spammers use catch-all e-mail addresses on cheap domains (or even hacked ones) through which a script reads any incoming mail and click verification links. E-mail verification will not stop spam.
And regarding captchas… Although they can be programmatically solved nowadays, with some effort, spammers have found it much easier to just offer a secondary service somewhere such as a web proxy, and relay captchas they come across to real humans (who believe they have to solve it to continue using the service, unwitting that it’s third party and part of a spamming operation).
The solution to spam is not possible outside of being different. And by that I mean a custom solution that you don’t popularize. For example, I made a small custom forum with a custom captcha. The captcha is extremely basic and it wouldn’t take many lines of code to decipher the three numbers represented in their un-antialiased, 2-color glory. But it’s all custom, with custom file-names etc and no references to any blogging or forum software. Spammers are not a problem at all due to this. It wouldn’t be economical for them to cook up solutions on a site-by site basis.
@Mitch A commenting thing? You mean threaded comments or something else? What would keep the spammers from simply creating a new email address every day to use for spamming? You can get one almost anywhere including Yahoo without revealing a real email address.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..What IS a Social Media Expert?
You know, you need to add a commenting thing so we know which post to comment on. lol
No, my point was that for these people to set up gravatars, they have to give an email address; I did anyway. And if Gravatar set it up where people had to confirm their email addresses before being allowed to add one, it would block the spammers, and those addresses that came back good, then spammed, Gravatar could report those folks.
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@Sire – I suspect that original part showing up in multiple comments in the same blog may be what got their efforts identified so quickly as spam. Alas, I suspect it is all automated so they most likely didn’t “recognize” your great comment. (But we do and appreciate it!)
@InternetHowBlog – I doubt they’re copying/pasting although they could be doing that in countries where the exchange rate makes labor inexpensive. The real “advantage” of spam – if you want to call it that – is that it is automated. They write a program that grabs sentences from existing comments, combines them, adds the original part and adds it.
While it IS always better to do things in a quality way it is time-consuming so most simply resort to quantity through automation. I may eventually have to break down and add the math plugin or something similar to get rid of those automated spammers.
@Mitch – Gravatar may be willing to ban them; however, they’ll just keep getting new Avatars so that won’t really help much. I am thankful they aren’t using CommentLuv as at least right now we can tell those who provide last blog posts are real commentators.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Do YOUR Blogging Goals Include Monetization: Benefits Our Readers Receive
Oh, I forgot to thank you for mentioning me in this post. I’m afraid it’s a bloke thing and once I remembered I felt I had to come back and put things right. At least the spammer recognized a good comment to scrape when he saw it 😉
Sire’s last blog post..The SEO Importance Of Permalinks
Well, too bad he had to add that bit of original content at the end as it really gave it away, the style being so different and all. I’ve actually had some spammers that have started to use gravatar in their comments. Man they are getting serious aren’t they?
Sire’s last blog post..The 10 Stages Of A Twitterer
Sire mentions something interesting and true here. Most of these spammers are using avatars, which can make it kind of tricky once again. One would hope there might be a way to go to the Gravatar people and “out” these spammers; what do you think of that prospect?
Mitch’s last blog post..Article Packages
Instead of doing all those copying and pasting, can’t they just write few lines 🙂 No, then they need to read the post and need to think about what to say. Plus don’t they know that their effort is worthless. I check all the comments on my blog. If they are spamm, I delete them. I am sure a lot of serious bloggers do the same. They need a big knock on their head and realise, they can use that time more productive.
InternetHowBlog’s last blog post..How to let other blogs know that we are linking to them? Alternative to trackback
LOL Well there are lots of things that are very interesting that don’t require stealing. That is what spam is – it steals our time which is our most valuable asset. Many criminals are highly intelligent but the main thing they are is SELFISH!
One of these days we should talk affiliate programs. Have you considered promoting magazines related to your niches? They usually pay 30+% and were a top earner for me. I’ve got to make the time to add them to all the blogs I’m working on. I discussed that in the blog post I’ll link to the URL in this comment.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Promote Your Business Without Cash
Yes, I did see it on Twitter, and I figure lots of folks here are probably in bed, so it should be me first, except for that sneaky Sire.
You know, there was a study done on criminals who’d been caught doing some things who were pretty intelligent. The study found that these people do this stuff not because they can’t do anything else, but because they think earning money in other ways is boring. How’s that for a motivation?
Mitch’s last blog post..Top Three Do’s And Don’ts
@Mitch That was quick! Good to know you’re getting the Tweets announcing my posts. At least I’m guessing that is how you arrived so soon after I published this post. Today is the first time I’ve noticed this behavior. The comments sounded so familiar!
They really are sneaky and I really do wish they would spend their time doing something more productive. I suspect much of our spam issue is caused by those selling traffic to other businesses and not disclosing WHERE that traffic is coming from. I doubt that many would be interested in buying spam generated traffic IF they knew what it was.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Do YOUR Blogging Goals Include Monetization: Benefits Our Readers Receive
Wow, that’s pretty interesting stuff. Many folks have been writing on my March post about spam this evening, as we’ve all been talking about how sneaky these guys are, and here you are, finding something that’s even sneakier than I had thought. I’m going to be watching out for this myself; thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Mitch’s last blog post..Six Things I’ve Learned About Affiliate Marketing