Security & Privacy
Spam begets spam
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21 Sep 2003
Vandalism experts note that one of the best ways to combat graffiti and other forms of vandalism is to clean it up immediately. A wall with graffiti on it attracts more graffiti. A building with broken windows encourages other miscreants to break windows.
The same appears to be true with comment spam. While my anti-spambot measures seem to be effective, they’ll do nothing to stop people from hand-entering spam comments. I just received a spammy comment on my SimpleComments entry. Looking at the log files, the individual was on my site for 90 seconds before submitting the comment.
Looking to see how they found my site, I discovered that the initial referral was a Google search for sites linking to a common comment spammer. Digging further, I found that I’ve had several visits over the past month from people searching for links to common spam domains.
If you’re a spammer, it makes sense to post your links in places that they will be effective. If the links are deleted immediately, all your work has been lost. So the spammers are searching for spam comments that have remained on the page long enough to get the link into Google.
If you want to reduce the flow of comment spam to your site, be vigilant in removing the ones that do get posted. Leaving them up, even for a short time, can catch the eye of more spammers.