Wednesday 13 June 2012

Anonymous spam

Liz raised this today, and I've noticed a few others of my blogbuddies being invaded by anonymous spammer comments recently.  There are some dolts out there who think this is a good way to promote themselves or their products.

I can't really see why Blogger allows anonymous comments at all, and have asked them:
 https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/msg/blogger/-/ABJM0uKowKMJ

ALL the (thankfully few) anonymous comments I get are spam of one sort or the other.  I really can't see any justification at all for anonymity.  They don't allow it on G+.  Just banning it wholesale would eliminate most if not all comment spam, and harm nobody.  What do you think? 

15 comments:

  1. Have you thought of what you could do with a substantial pay-day loan?

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  2. That was just me being hilarious

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  3. I kinda guessed - much too articulate to be the real thing. But for the record, my reply would have been: "Yes, please bring the appropriate orifice round here."

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  4. LOL @ Anonymous

    Yeah, I can't say I'm particularly keen on Anonymous commenters. Generally, I've known people who were too passive aggressive to stand by their argument and hid behind it.

    I suppose they want the anonymous option in the case of commenting on sex blogs perhaps?

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  5. Somebody left an anonymous comment on a post of mine last year taking issue with something I had said (or rather had worded badly and they had misunderstood). This is the sort of person Roses is referring to - not brave enough to put their own name to their opinion.

    Leaving a comment as 'Anonymous' is a bit lacking in imagination. I mean, can't they even be bothered to make-up a false name?

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  6. Working on it - click on the link in the post.

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  7. Can you choose not to allow anonymous comments?
    I don't seem to get them much which is fine by me.

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  8. If you banned anonymous comments but allowed people to comment - without a Blogger profile - just by giving a name, spammers would just do that instead.

    I have considered stopping comments from anyone without a Blogger or OpenID profile, what stops me is that some people who read and comment on my blog have neither and I wouldn't want them to stop. So the spam is an annoying but necessary evil. I also get anonymous comments from trolls - all the greats.

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  9. Four more spam attempts over night. It's getting worse!

    I have implemented Tim's suggestion (which I think is on my comments thread) of moderation for older posts to see what (if any) effect that has.

    Has anyone looked at the latest suggestion on Tim's forum thread? I'm a bit scared to click on DarkUFOs link in case it's more spam!

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  10. We'll never get rid of it entirely, but there are things that can be done. You can flag a published comment as spam, for example; but I don't know whether this gets reported to Blogger, or what they do if it is.
    As regards spam which has been picked up by Blogger and so not published, it's nuisance value but harmless to my mind. I'd actually prefer not to be told about it, just for them to delete it (or even better investigate it e.g. via the links it usually contains).

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  11. My friend John G's comments have been marked as spam for weeks now, which I can't understand as they're sent from a Blogger account. I can't unmark them either. Other side of the coin, I suppose.

    I've always had comment moderation on posts over 3 weeks old, but recently spam comments have turned up on new posts too. None of them has been published though it's still a nuisance.

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  12. Oh, I didn't answer your question. I do have a few blog friends who don't have a blog and don't want to set one up, even if it won't be used. So I'm with Mr London Street.

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  13. Welcome home Z (if you are!)

    You don't have to start a blog to have a Google account - it's the other way round! For example, anyone who uses gmail already has one. Blogger is just one of the products that the account gives access to.

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  14. ... and my last word on this:

    I get email notification of all comments on my blog - presumably because of some setting I've set - and I'm very happy with this, it saves me going in and viewing the blog post by post. The spam ones generally don't make it to the blog, and I check my spam folder in Blogger occasionally and delete them. The old ones (>7 days) get referred to me for approval or otherwise.
    Google would doubtless say that if everyone had an account with them the problem would go away ... and they'd be right! But ...

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  15. i agree with your last word on the subject, sugar! moderation is on for posts older than 7 days, so i decide what happens. xox

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