Damn Comment Spam!
October 12, 2003 15 | Comments (Closed)
This will be my last rant for awhile, I promise.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother with this site. You may have noticed that lately I’ve had a bit of a bad attitude when it comes to my Web related posts. Hopefully it’s a passing thing.
Sometimes having a personal Web site isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes. For the most part my sites are well worth the considerable effort that goes into them. The connections I’ve made, the things I’ve learned and the conversations I’ve had have been wonderful.
But you have to take the bad with the good and I’ve had to deal with some hearty criticism, even some outright personal attacks on everything from my writing style to my professionalism. I’ve had my design ripped, my knowledge rudely challenged (and probably rightly so) and my methods questioned. and I understand that some folks just don’t get it and for the most part my readers are full of praise or at least respect.
The site itself can be a pain to maintain, but I find the vast majority of that effort well worth it, if for nothing else but the learning experience.
All of this I can deal with. In fact, I’ve never seriously thought about throwing in the towel. Until today. What I’m having a hard time with, as I’m sure many of you with Web sites of your own are all too familiar with, is the fucking comment spam. This shit really makes me wonder why I bother?
Are there people out there who have a vested interest in crippling every that is good about the Web? It sure seems like it lately doesn’t it? I can’t be the only one feeling this. Thus the negativity of some of my recent posts.
As one who does everything I can to make the Web an easier place for people to get around, it’s very frustrating to feel like, as a whole, the Web of late is taking one step forward and two steps back. Argh. Anyway, back to the comment spam.
I spent over an hour this morning deleting over 100 spam comments. I realize I could put a quick and decisive end to this by disabling comments. And if it continues I may resort to that option. But, to be honest, the relevant comments, good or bad, full of praise or downright argumentative, are one of the things that makes this site worth it for me.
The posts on this site are less like self-contained articles and more like an invitation to a conversation. I’m not sure it would be worth it without those conversations.
However, as much as I value this site, and those conversations, I’ve got better things to do on a Sunday morning than delete comment spam from my site. I really wonder why these assholes bother. I mean, I don’t make any money from my efforts on this site and I’ll kill the whole thing before I let some pornographer or scam artist make money from my efforts. Give it the fuck up people, your wasting everyone’s time here!
So, what to do? I realize there are potential solutions for this, but to be honest I was hoping I’d not have to look into those and I worry that, as with e-mail spam, that the spammers will just find a work around and my efforts will have been wasted.
For now I’m not going to do anything major. I added a disclaimer to my comments form, maybe that will help a bit. If thought about keeping comments open for a week or so and then closing them, but I’d hate to do that.
No, I think I’ll look into potential solutions and if I can find one that is easy enough I’ll put that in place and hope for the best. I’m also hoping that in the next update, if it ever comes, to Movable Type there will be a better interface for dealing with comments. A mass delete would be great.
So I leave you now, fingers firmly crossed, with the hope that comment spam doesn’t force me to make changes that could result in the end of this site. Maybe I should start a “Take Back The Web” campaign or something. It seems like there are too many folks out there doing way to much to fuck everything up for the rest of us…
Nah, it’s not worth the bother.
Filed under: Web General
Comments
1. Keith said:
God Damn it! Less then 15 minutes after I posted this I get 40 more spam comments.
Posted on October 12, 2003 12:26 PM | #
2. Simon Willison said:
It sounds like you’re getting it even worse than I am - I’m up to about a dozen spam comments every two days. Don’t let the bastards get you down!
I’ve decided that there’s only one solution to comment spam: better tools for deleting comments. I’m lucky in that I wrote my own blogging system so I’m free to build these (not that I have yet). At the moment my favourite option is to have every comment emailed to me along with a magic link that deletes that comment with one click, perhaps optionally banning any sites linked to at the same time. I’m also considering a “delete all comments from this IP” option (although this would need a confirmation screen to ensure nothing legitimate was deleted at the same time).
If you are using the version of Moveable Type that uses MySQL for the back end, you should be able to create a simple PHP comment deletion system that directly modifies the database - although it’s possible that solution won’t work as it won’t delete the generated files (you’ll need to work out a way of doing that as well). If you’re on the filesystem version of MT you’ll have to either get seriously dirty with Perl or wait for one of the many MT experts to come out with an appropriate plugin.
I believe that this is a battle that can be won by firefighting. Provided the tools are available to make deleting comments even easier than posting them (with an intelligent enough UI to avoid accidental deletion of real comments) we can delete spam comments almost as soon as they appear. The value to the spammer becomes zero and hopefully they’ll stop. Of course, they might just automate the process entirely and spam us to hell and back in which case the solution would be to move more towards IP banning. Whatever happens though, I’m sure we can keep commenting on blogs without giving in to spammers.
Posted on October 12, 2003 12:44 PM | #
3. Nick said:
I think the problem is with the comment systems implemented by many blogging applications. They require no authentication, there is no way to validate who posts. So there is no way to ban them.
My next site is going to use Drupal, which actually has a user database. Then you can ban users who spam, and just the registration process stops many automated spammers.
The web is always going to be crawling with assholes, virus writers, spammers, script kiddies, we can not change that. The software we use has to change to stop them.
Posted on October 12, 2003 01:00 PM | #
4. Keith said:
Thanks for the comments (oh the irony) guys. Simon, your comment makes me feel a bit better about this. This is something I feel needs to be addressed and I wish I had the knowhow to do it myself.
I just spent an another half-hour deleting spam. I’m off to a football game (go Seahawks) and if there is another batch of comment spam here when I get back I’m going to have to disable comments until I can figure this out.
Does anyone know of an easy way to turn off comments in MT without having to comment out (pardon the pun) the comment form? I’d like to turn off comments for every entry over a few weeks old, that way I can still have people comment on relevant entries until I can figure out a more permanent solution.
Also, any easy MT solutions would be greatly appriceated if you have them…
Posted on October 12, 2003 01:08 PM | #
5. James said:
I emailed you one solution, here’s an interesting post about it.
http://www.jayallen.org/journey/2003/09/killing_comment_spam_dead
Lots of other solutions available (or soon to be).
Posted on October 12, 2003 01:35 PM | #
6. Scrivs said:
I just spend most of the day today closing the comments on entries that were more than a couple of weeks old so that I could avoid the spammers. I think a great solution would be if MT could close comments after a set number of days for a post. That would help greatly because not too many people follow an entry after the first couple of days. Also it seems that spammers target older posts and since those would be closed that should put a quick halt to most spam.
Keith: There will be better days ahead. It’s people like yourself he help to move the web in the direction that it should be going. Without someone like yourself we simply continue to lose the battle.
Posted on October 12, 2003 01:37 PM | #
7. Nick Finck said:
Keith, I can relate to your situation here. I know there are a few options you have to reduce this problem… as James pointed out Jay has had some great posts about defending your MT site from this kind of problem.
Ultimatly there is a phillosophical issue at stake here. It has to do with the true nature of poor marketing techniques and ethics in the way of personal respect. It’s like taking off your shoes before walking across someone else’s carpet.
With that said, I am not sure you can convince someone they are not ethical even if you could find out who they are and confront them. In their eyes they are doing business… looking, despratly, for any dime they can find… and doing whatever it takes to get it.
So, for the time being we will all have to suffer from telemarking calls at dinner, pounds of bulk mail in the mailbox, junkemail filling out inboxes and yes, spam posts pouring into our comment forms.
I really wish some kind of international organization would be formed to prosocute these individuals and companies for their lack of ethics, because it has become clear that our own government can’t bring themselves to deal with it.
Posted on October 12, 2003 07:19 PM | #
8. kdb003 said:
I would suggest simply disabling website links for the poster. Instead put the nonactive address besides the user name. If you really want to see a persons web page you can cut and paste it. That should the stupid spammers.
Posted on October 12, 2003 09:09 PM | #
9. Simon Willison said:
I just came up with a new method of fighting spam: since most comment spam is created purely to increase Google PageRank, I’ve added a filter to my comments that redirect all links through a redirect script, which is blocked from Google by a robots.txt file.
Posted on October 13, 2003 12:34 AM | #
10. Keith said:
Thanks for all the comments and ideas. The good news is - No new spam since the last round. I’m working on a solution - a few that have been offered sound pretty good as temporary stop gaps, although I’m still not sure which one I’ll go with.
Anyway, thanks again for all the feedback.
Posted on October 13, 2003 10:22 AM | #
11. Nick said:
It looks like a spam link, but is actually useful!
http://cheerleader.yoz.com/archives/000849.html
Posted on October 13, 2003 02:33 PM | #
12. Michael Heilemann said:
“I believe it is our fate to be here. It is our destiny. I believe this night holds, for each and every one of us, the very meaning of our lives. This is a war and we are soldiers. What if tomorrow the war could be over? Isn’t that worth fighting for? Isn’t that worth dying for?”
Hang in there :)
Posted on October 14, 2003 01:29 AM | #
13. Scott Johnson said:
Hi there,
Some of the work we’re doing over on Feedster might be useful here. http://www.feedster.com/blog/
We’re now publishing a blacklist of known comment spammers.
Best
Scott
Posted on October 14, 2003 05:17 AM | #
14. Keith said:
Update - I’ve put into place Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist and I’m hoping this will help. It was pretty easy to get up and I’ll let you know how it fares.
Posted on October 14, 2003 01:50 PM | #
15. CHRISTINE GISSING said:
please help, I have received a spam on my computer at home thru MSS messenger. How do I get rid of it. I cannot open any e-mails as this dam thing keeps coming up. I’m new to the game as you are probabley aware.
Thanks
Christine
Posted on January 12, 2004 06:12 AM | #
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