Beware of Comment Spam Tricks

25 October, 2009 - 07:00 AM - 7 Comments

One new tactic that I hadn’t seen before is when blog spammers will leave a comment on your blog but impersonate the name of one of your regular and common visitors.Â This happened to several of my blogs, where a spam comment would show up with the same user as the person I know, but different email and website link associated with the name.

Example was when a commenter used Zorlone‘s identity to leave a comment on my blog:

I knew this wasn’t Zorlone himself because the email was wrong and no Gravatar pic associated with the account, but many of these types of comment spam will defeat and get past your Akismet and comment spam blockers.Â I was lucky that my blog is set to only approve comments from previously approved commenters.
Word to the wise fellow bloggers, screen your comments carefully, don’t just look at the name of the person who comments, read the URL and email to see if someone is impersonating one of your friends and readers.

-Dragon Blogger

Minimum Comment Length – Reduce Comment Spam With WordPress There are many great plug-ins to reduce spam, Akismet is one of the most popular one but I notice a...
Going to Try WP-Spam Free WordPress Plugin I will be installing the WP-SpamFree wordpress plugin to see if it helps reduce the number of spam comments in...
Comments Sometimes Flagged as Spam Sometimes Akismet incorrectly flags someone's legitimate comment as spam, and all you have to do is check with the blog...
War Against Spam Comments In my quest to Continue to block blog spam, a recent attack of spam against my blog has me thinking...
Get Off Akismet Spam List Article on Zemalf.com shows you how to get your self removed from the Akismet Spam list so that you can...

Written by Justin Germino (1514 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

Follow Justin Germino on Twitter @dragonblogger

Carol

Thank you so much, i am also new to blogging and having a number of problems with spam, read a few topics about trying to stop it. you have some good advice here thank you

share flag

spam
offensive
disagree
off topic

Pat

Interesting blog. I'm new to blogging and didn't realize I was being spammed. I figured it out and stopped it, but I was puzzled for awhile. It won't be happening anymore.

Roy

These spam bots really has a lot of tricks. First time I hear about them using the names of your friends.

What I have seen in my blogs is that they copy portions of comments already approved in the blog and use them in the other posts in the blogs.
.-= Roy´s last blog ..So long, Geocitiesâ€¦ we will miss youâ€¦ =-.

Jena Isle

That's a dirty way of using comments. Don't they believe in karma?
.-= Jena Isle´s last blog ..My Painful Past =-.

Zorlone

People should be more careful from the comments of these new age spammers.

Disqus only helps me moderate comments and block spammers, but it doesn't protect me from those actual spammers who leave links to my comment section.

Z
.-= Zorlone´s last blog ..October Night =-.

Ditesco

Thanks for the heads up. Never did cross my mind that spammers can also us this trick, although I do believe that the commenting system I use approves users in combination with their name, url and ip. That should filter it better, don't you think?
.-= Ditesco´s last blog ..What Does Google Know About You? =-.

dragonblogger

They don't go in the spam bucket, but show up as "unapproved" comments, if you quickly scan the name you may be inclined to auto approve, you must manually read the email and URL linkback to be certain.