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Possible harmful blog comments

by ASCW
17 replies
Hello fellow warriors. My site has slowly been chugging along for the last year or so, and there's recently been a flood of comments. I went from having 0 comments from mostly the entirety of the year to now having to approve 4 a week. Most of them seem legitimate people who are grateful for the insight and commentary I provide, however some of them are highly suspicious.

For example I had two IDENTICAL comments made on different days from different posters but both with a @ymail address. I'll also get someone with a url along the lines of "blahblahDOESEXTENZEWORK.com". I also had a comment along the lines of
"Hey I like your blog. Recently, I've been thinking about starting my own. What blog platform do you use?"
I was going to send him an email back, because I figured I didn't need to clog my comment space with specs. It turned out that his email address either no longer existed or something was simply broken.

My main question: Are these comments potentially putting me or my site at risk? Is there anyway that me approving their comments could somehow end up biting me in the ass? Is there any information about my site that I should keep secret? Besides the obvious of course, usernames, passwords, etc.

Thanks for the help.

ASCW
#blog #comments #harmful
  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Even those that you think are "legitimate and grateful" comments - are spam made by jerks.

    No, they will not endanger your blog but you should kill all those comments.

    4 per week? that's peanuts. 400 per day... that's something - just kidding.

    Do you have any anti-spam plugin installed? WP comes with Akismet, just activate it. (you need an API key from wordpress.COM)
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  • Profile picture of the author Dev Maritz
    Hi there,

    No they are not harmful but you should prepare yourself that there will always be spam coming your way when you have a blog. Fortunately, you can do something about it.

    Get yourself a plugin callled WP-Spam free at
    WordPress › WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam WordPress Plugins

    This has personal blocked over 450 comments so far on my blog.

    You are doing the right thing by checking their backlink. This is the best way to ensure that the website they provide relates to yours. It is so funny sometimes seeing people trying to lead me back to a "backpain" website that sells pain killers.

    You will also see that many of the comments are similar. Look out for anything like: "I found your blog useful, what platform are you using?" etc. I received many of those before.

    Hope this helped

    Dev
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    Unless the comments directly relate to your post, then they are almost certainly spam.

    As mentioned in the previous posts, if you are using Wordpress, the anti-spam filters are very effective.
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    • Profile picture of the author ASCW
      Thanks for your help and support. I went tinkering in my Cpanel and apparently I already have spam free already installed (I try to stay out of there whenever possible, something I will have to eventually overcome but that's a battle I will have to fight later), and it has also blocked over 300 comments.

      I'm pretty sure some of these are legitimate, but some are slipping through the cracks. I'll just have to keep an eye on my comments. Although I will eventually have to solve this dilemma permanently as my site progressively becomes more popular.

      ASCW
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      Site being revamped.

      If you want help with copy stuff, pm me.

      Cool.

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    • Profile picture of the author Pierre!
      Yah, you should activate Akismet with the FREE key from Wordpress!

      And yes - Comments can be harmful.

      I approved a couple comments one time... they were caught by Akismet, but I thought that I knew better (oops).

      After a couple days I could not take it anymore and visited the sights embedded in their comments. First one was okay... {sheesh} What was I thinking??? (LOL)

      Started through the second one, got to the linked website and started checking some articles and site links when.... *WHAM* Here goes the AV software tripping on an attack!

      Closed the browser window immediately, rebooted into Safe Mode w/ Networking. Got the Anti-Virus signature files updated and began the scan. Sure enough, there was a Trojan on my system.

      I remember event every time I go to approve a comment that I am picking out of the Akismet quarantine. I shudder to think what one of my followers would have thought - Owner of the blog (ME) approved the comment, and then I got hacked!

      Not cool in my books. So I don't mess around with this stuff anymore. My reputation isn't worth it.

      Your reputation is also worth keeping. Just delete them SPAM comments - Akismet works very well!

      HTH....

      HTH
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      • Profile picture of the author cma01
        Just because someone's site is listed as an attack site or is infected, it doesn't mean that they themselves are the perpetrators.

        I've gotten quite a few clients that needed help cleaning up their site because they were hacked and I have a friend that has a site on a platform that is designed for consignment shops and her site is always being listed as an attack site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rob Whisonant
    Yes they "CAN" be harmful if the link in the comment points to a site that Google or other search engines considers to be a bad neighborhood.

    Bad neighborhoods linking to you is fine, but if you start linking to bad neighborhoods your search engine listings could drop or you could be de-indexed.

    Re's
    Rob Whisonant
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  • Profile picture of the author BizBoost
    You wanna try something fun, take the unique portion of their name / backlink and type it into google. If it's multiple words, use quotes. You'll see how many other places they spammed. Some spammers use a random number/word generator to prevent this but many don't.
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    • Profile picture of the author ASCW
      I'd like to note that they aren't posting their links, just providing their link within the url box. I'm wouldn't allow links to be coming off of my page without checking them first.
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      Site being revamped.

      If you want help with copy stuff, pm me.

      Cool.

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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    That's enough - that IS a link. Their name is the link text and it point to the URL typed in the "box" as you called it.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    {Hey|Hello|Greetings|Hiya} I like your {blog|website}. Recently, I've been {thinking about starting|wanting to start|trying to start} my own.

    hit n' run scrapebox
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    • Profile picture of the author ASCW
      Thank god for the Warrior forum. I will clean all of these up asap.

      Is there a way to disable the URL option? I figure if urls are not allowed spammers won't bother playing with my site.
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      Site being revamped.

      If you want help with copy stuff, pm me.

      Cool.

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      • Profile picture of the author tribros
        Originally Posted by ASCW View Post

        Is there a way to disable the URL option? I figure if urls are not allowed spammers won't bother playing with my site.
        I'm looking for that solution too. I've seen many blogs that have removed the url option. Anyone know?
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    • Profile picture of the author Sara Young
      Originally Posted by jasonmorgan View Post

      {Hey|Hello|Greetings|Hiya} I like your {blog|website}. Recently, I've been {thinking about starting|wanting to start|trying to start} my own.

      hit n' run scrapebox
      Oh, no. I get much more interesting stuff.

      Here's an example:
      "It appears that you have put alot of energy in to your post and I want even more of them on line currently. I seriously got a kick through your post. I do not ever have much to voice replying, I simply want to comment to your remarkable work."

      You think it's spam?
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  • Profile picture of the author tyroneshum
    I highly recommend the Akismet tool and I use it for my blog to keep off the spam comments as well. Also, once you see that these comments do not anymore add value to your posts, simply delete them. You're not building a community of spammers there anyway but you have to build networks that actually contribute a lot of ideas.
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  • Profile picture of the author andybeveridge
    We all get them. I never understand the real point, because we all delete them.
    Another one I dislike is people using outsourcing who don't check their workers English. The comments never make sense.

    I thinking you blog makes much sense. Where can I find more.
    Hate those.

    Andy
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  • Profile picture of the author poker princess
    It's terrible: Every idiot has an opinion on everything. I think people got it all wrong on the whole democracy thing: In democracies, one may have an opinion, but one doesn't have to. If you have no idea what you are talking about, just shut the f*ck up. -- Dieter Nuhr, German comedian.

    I've gotten fed up by the attitude of a lot of commentors. That is, being totally destructive about work that people do. Often it's people commenting stories on something that appears to be vaguely related, but in fact they just hijack the story to nudge around, sometimes giving clear evidence that they haven't even bothered to read the story/blog post.

    It's remarkable that the worst comments are always first posts or grow to become a prominent "discussion" thread, because everybody likes to state his support or say how wrong the original poster is. This gives the whole post even more siginificance. Like a halo, it outshines the other comments, and sometimes even the article
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