Simon’s Blog

The problem of blog comment spam continues to increase. I’ve now had around a quarter of a million spam comments posted to this blog since I started it; with new spam comments currently coming in at the rate of thousands per day. Almost all are automatically flagged by my spam filters; only tens are missed. Of those that are missed by the spam filters, almost all are caught by my keyword filter that sends messages to moderation based on certain keywords. So, perhaps just two or three spam messages actually make it through on to the comments. It’s manageable.

What’s interesting (well, I say interesting, it’s more laughable really) is that in recent months, the comment spammers have extended their range to include ultra-mundane topics such as bingo and curtains! You know that SEO has hit the mainstream when they’re posting spam messages about buying curtains and playing bingo

While it’s easy for me to delete this stuff, clearly lots of people don’t delete it - otherwise the SEO spammers wouldn’t bother to do it. This kind of rubbish is polluting the Internet, which is why I wish Jason Calacanis and the whole team at Mahalo the best of luck. If they can make it so that SEO doesn’t work, maybe the “bad” SEOs will just crawl back to where they came from. The blackhat SEO guys don’t just post spam on blogs; they also do stuff like sending personal e-mails asking to buy text links on blogs. They get really insistent when their messages are ignored. I had one guy that said, “I don’t think you can have understood my previous message - you just ignored it - I am willing to pay a lot of money for a text ad on your blog.” I don’t know, but I’m guessing that particular SEO and I have rather different ideas about what constitutes a lot of money I mean, I do have a price… to be clear, all offers over $400,000 for a short 25-character text ad to run for 1 year on this blog will be seriously considered… but please, don’t contact me if you’re going to offer less than this.

But I digress. What have comment spammers been spamming about in 2007? If you’re interested, a look at my keyword filter will throw some light on the subject… Please look away now, if you’re easily offended - btw. So, in no particular order, we have:

anal, amateur, bet, credit, debt, loan, milf, porn, pussy, gay, lesbians, fuck, hentai,squidoo, dildo, teen, propecia, nice, sorry, interesting, cool, ambien, prescription, viagra, roulette, casino, kasino, roulet, bingo, loan, tramadol, phentermine, erotica, tamoxifen, bmw, insurance, occupational, tester, aposter, logistics, test, xanax, vallium, valium, poker, card, black jack, wager, sports, sex, nipple, malaria, wager, toyota, dick, erectile, mortgage, percocet.

Interestingly, it’s got the point where anyone posting a comment from either Russia or Spain also has to go to moderation, such is the volume of spam from those countries. Actually, I think it’s the Spanish that seem so obsessed with spamming places to buy curtains on-line…

So - that’s it then - The State of The Spamosphere for 2007: sex; drugs; gambling; bingo; and curtains…