Why do spammers do this?

[dots and spots Jeff]

I have a blog that has become a little 'dormant' - I haven't posted since September. It was never a 'big blog', no followers, and very little traffic. I really just set it up to experiment with making a Wordpress blog.

On occasion I have had some comments posted to the blog - clearly spam. As I moderate comments before posting none of them get posted. I can understand how posting a link may have an SEO benefit, but surely any benefit from a blog PR0, is pretty useless. However, looking at the posts, the links don't always seem to be valid. Below is an example of one of the blog comments I've deleted.

I just wonder why people do this?

Jeff

Example of 1 of 10 comments I've deleted today: (please don't click the links - I've no idea where they 'go'!)

dwpragvdjfwo, tkbaydcurwtp (http://tkbaydcurwtp.com/), pndkglaqqoyv, http://nohvkyprgfsy.com/

[ozbon]

Mainly (I think) to see which sites don't moderate comments etc. - if a crappy one gets through, you know the decent ones will be seen too.

If it doesn't get through, well, keep on trying - another (different) one might do instead.

[An Oasis]

I just wonder why people do this?

Links.

99.99% are fully automated and they just keep firing off thousands...sometimes millions per day.

Check out any blackhat forum and you'll see hundreds of the bleeders at it.

[Comspec]

Aye, its quantity over quality with these comment spammers. I have a load caught on my WP blog myself.

Ensure:
1) You have a decent anti-spam addon installed to catch them
2) Change your settings in WP so that all comments with a link get 'moderated'
3) Block all the Ip addresses which are sending repeated spam.

Its about all you can do really, though I sometimes have as many as 200 on a day when they decide to come visit the nutters !!

[powerlines2000]

An IP tracer linked to a very small Guided nuke would be the best way to deal with the little bleeders.

[An Oasis]

An IP tracer linked to a very small Guided nuke would be the best way to deal with the little bleeders.

Damn, I like you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They recon that 90% (ish) of spam, originates from about 12 big league spammers. On that basis you clear up spam very quickly.

[tom111]

I have a blog that has become a . I can understand how posting a link may have an SEO benefit, but surely any benefit from a blog PR0, is pretty useless.

Not true, there are two things spammers look for, indexing and search engine ranking. A link in a PR0 blog will help with indexing... you just direct it to the particular page you want indexed, and volla, the search engine will find it. When you are puting up thousands of pages a day, indexing is much more difficult to do.

The second benefit is that PR0 blogs help you hide the fact that your distribution of links is skewed... if you were only to have links from high PR sources, it would be bleedingly obvious you were a spamer.


However, looking at the posts, the links don't always seem to be valid. Below is an example of one of the blog comments I've deleted.


Um, the answer is cloaking. The web site is set up so a human only sees a broken link. However, the search engines robot actually sees what the spammer wants it to see )i.e. a link to a page that has a link to the site they want ranked). If they allowed humans to see your site,
then you could easily report the spammers to google, in which case they would have their entire network taken off the search engine.

[HostColor]

Unfortunately spam works. if you look at the top listed websites in Google on lets say 20 different markets and/or keywords combinations you'll find out that at least 20% of the websites ranked in Top 30 are there because they use some kind of spamming marketing strategies.

[edmondscommerce]

recommend the recaptcha plugin for wordpress

by far the best CAPTCHA system, you can see it on my blog..

not had any spam issues since its been installed

[ozbon]

I try and avoid Captchas wherever possible, as they tend to be a) non-accessible and b) a pain in the arse.

On a WP blog, Akismet does a good job, and I usually put in Bad Behavior (it's American, can you tell?) or SpamKarma as well.

The alternative is to do a simple semi-Captcha with some question/answer bits like "What colour is an orange?" or "What's 2+2?" (although the latter needs to deal with both 4 and 'four' as responses.

[Eagle]

Bots will always eventually outsmart captcha.

[edmondscommerce]

To be honest its going more down the route of outsourcing the Captcha entry to developing countries...

or setting up ingenious sites with "attractive links" that require the captcha to be entered. The user is in fact solving captcha's for the black hatter by proxy.

AFAIK recaptcha has not been broken. The core reason is that its not computer generated in the first place so its hard to reverse engineer (as no engineering has gone on in the first place). If you didn't know, its actually scanned words from printed books etc that have failed to be solved by the automatic OCR systems being used to scan and archive these books.

That instantly makes them ideal for CAPTCHA use. The BHer will actually have to find a better OCR algo than being used by the archival teams - which is an incredibly tall order.