The Issue. Sites like mine allow readers to post comments. The comment feature makes the dialogue at MadeByMark a true, two-way conversation. Without it, I’d just be doing so much shouting. With it, you can talk back.
It’s repulsive, then, that spammers — not content with packing our Inboxes with ads for cheap viagra and penis enlargement — abuse the comment forms on sites like mine to leave links to their products and web sites. Here’s what they do:
1) Leave a fake comment. Usually, this is something like “Very interesting. We should discuss this further” or “Gothe once said no man is an island.”
2) Embed in the comment a link to a website for lesbian porn or naked Asian women.
The result. Spammers use automated computer programs to post comment spam to millions of websites like MadeByMark. Since Google ranks a site, in part, by the number of sites that link to it, having several million links suddenly appear to a spammer’s website pushes that site higher and higher in Google’s search listings.
Fighting back. Over the last six or seven months, I’ve begun using a blacklisting product that keeps most of these creeps away. In addition, I’ve started reviewing every comment — and that’s a lot of comments, folks — that gets left here at MadeByMark. Finally, if someone ever leaves comment spam on the site, I ban that user’s IP address — the number associated with their computer’s location on the network. Once banned, that person can never post here again.
Meanwhile, it’s pretty funny to watch the behavior of these guys. They stop by. They post spam. They get blacklisted and banned. They try several times to post spam again. It doesn’t work. They use the site search feature to search for their own comments, fake email addresses, and weblink. (I see every search every person attempts using MadeByMark’s search feature.) They don’t find their spam … so they try to post it again … and the cycle repeats.
I’m considering another little security measure that would require visitors to register and be confirmed as legitimate human users before they would be able to leave comments. I hesitate to do this — I’ve always thought it nice to allow anyone to join the discussion — but it may be something I have to do to further stem the flow of nasty spam.
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