Sunday, July 23, 2006

I've Been Spammed - Big Time

Grrr! What is wrong with these people? It is bad enough that we have to put up with spam in email, now we have to deal with it all over the place. Twice now, in the last couple of days, my blog has been hit by an automatic spammer. Earlier this week, 136 messages were added to the comments section throughout my blog with supposed compliments, but they also included a little link at the bottom that if you, my unsuspecting reader, clicked on it took you to gambling sites or insurance sites, and perhaps a few others because I only checked a few out. This afternoon, in less than two minutes, 198 comments were added with links to other sites, including pornography!

A few months ago, when I wrote about our trip to the Grand Canyon, a link was posted to tours out of Vegas to the Grand Canyon. At that time, I was able to track down the company and they assured me they would never do that. However, the very next time I mentioned the Grand Canyon, there was the link. This time I was able to prove it was them. Surprisingly, they never responded again.

In order to delete these comments, I have to go to each one individually and it is a three step process that is very time consuming! I guess I will be doing that for the next couple of hours, thanks to these people. So, what to do about it? Well, this Blogger site gives me a couple of choices. I could select the option that before your comments get published, I have to approve them. I don't like that option. The other option, the one I have chosen, is that when you want to post a comment, you will have to type a special word that is shown when you go to post a comment. Here is the explanation from the Blogger site:

"What this does is to prevent automated systems from adding comments to your blog, since it takes a human being to read the word and pass this step. If you've ever received a comment that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then you've encountered comment spam. A lot of this is done automatically by software which can't pass the word verification, so enabling this option is a good way to prevent many such unwanted comments."

So, an additional step for my dear readers to by-pass people who have no sense of shame. Sorry about that!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John-
Well, advertisers have to make their money also. LOL!!! I always wondered what the word verification was all about. Now I know. What a pain for you. Take care-

David Arenson said...

John,

Word verification works like a charm. I've been using it for a couple of months now.

These spammers annoyed me, too, and I wrote something awhile back that I'm sure you'll appreciate:

http://clldiary.blogspot.com/2006/01/attack-of-hair-loss-bozo.html

Anyway, welcome to the world of spam-free blogging!

David