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. 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. 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
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Tags: Beware of Comment Spam Tricks, blog comment impersonation, blog comment spam, blogging help, blogging tips, blogging with comment spam, comment spam, comment spam tricks, commenter impersonation, defeating comment spam, new comment spam, screen blog comments, tips for bloggers, wordpress comment spam
October 25th, 2009 at 10:14 am
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?
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October 25th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
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.
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October 25th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
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
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October 26th, 2009 at 5:13 am
That’s a dirty way of using comments. Don’t they believe in karma?
Jena Isle´s last blog ..My Painful Past
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October 27th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
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, Geocities… we will miss you…
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May 11th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
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.
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May 16th, 2010 at 8:22 am
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
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