Thursday, September 22, 2005

You know you've arrived when...

...comment spam starts showing up on your blog.

Oh well, I suppose it had to happen sometime. But until now, I haven't been plagued by Comment Spam, like some bloggers complain about. I've seen plenty of sites get taken down by spam but I guess that only happens if you have some readers.

But, fortunately, I do have a few...and now I'm the victim of comment spam myself. Well...victim might be a strong term. But I have begun receiving some very polite spam messages. How do I know they're spam, you ask?

Well, first, they're anonymous, which is a red flag right there. Most of the comments I get are from people I know, so I'm always interested when I see an Anonymous listing in the mail.

Second, the comment compliments me on the "nice blog" and urges me to "keep it up." Then it immediately refers to a neat site somewhere else on the Internet, with a link embedded in the message to a website.

That's it.

Normally, I just delete them, but I thought perhaps I should find out more about how to stop them...and what do you know? Blogger has something called word verification that you can turn on in your comments. It forces anyone leaving a comment to type in the correct series of letters that you see from an image. Supposedly, these automated scripts that are sending out the comment spam aren't able to do that, so - Presto - No Spam!

Sounds good to me. I've turned it on and now I'll just wait for all of you to add your comments...all right?...go ahead...I'm waiting...sigh...

1 comment:

Paul said...

I'm starting to get spam comments as well. The word verification is a great idea. I hope that the few people who read my blog start posting comments. They're too shy for some reason.