Elliott Rodgers

I’ve noticed recently that I’m getting an increasing amount of curious borderline spam messages from my Contact Form. These fall into one of two forms

article writing; offering to write articles on my behalf. Prices offered are as low as $0.01 a word. Often these messages contain some amazing grammatical errors, bad spelling (or US spelling) or glaring punctuation mistake like apostrophe’s in the wrong place (yes that was an intentional ironic error).

SEO Services offering to do SEO/SEM services for me. These often contain similar spelling or grammar errors as the article writing emails which doesn’t bode well. The left hand summary about me under the photograph of me clearly identifies me as an web developer and internet entrepreneur. Although SEO and SEM isn’t one of my primary skills, I still have some talent and dabble. If you don’t believe me try some of these Google Searches…

british gas top up cards and internet explorerbritish gas top up cards and internet explorer (Has been #1 and #2 for months;)
british gas top up internet explorer 9
(#1 and #2 for months)
For international visitors British Gas is a major utility company and part of Centria, a large multi-national company.

theme park accident uk (this was a rather nasty scam doing the rounds on Facebook)

talking dog gets no bacon (#2 and beaten by YouTube [part of Google]. Refers to an absolutely hilarious video I blogged about.. Talking Dog Gets No Bacon)

I’ve also noticed some regular comments cropping up, I’m not going to suddenly become stupid just because a comment contains some praise included in a comment. If someone has something sensible and worth including in a post and relevant to the topic it’ll be included. Sometimes I’ll even include a comment when it runs contrary to my own opinion in the interests of free speech.

If the first post hasn’t been approved changing a word or two wont increase the chances. On my blog, like tens of millions of other blogs or websites around the interwebs I use Akismet which grabs spam comments and tucks them away safely. So spammy comments sit out of site until they get a second or two as I scan down the page before deleting them.

If you want a comment including on my blog it should be relevant to the post, not filled with spammy links and it’s not nessercary to “bribe” me with compliments first. Don’t use the same comment on lots of blogs or websites or Akismet will tag it as spam.

Someone using the email address rhymnaninly@gmail.com via a Serbian ISP Inferno has repeatedly been spamming comments despite me making it very clear where I stand on these things in my rules for commenting.

Well I’ve notified their ISP and Google.

We shall see where Google stands on gmail users sending spam now.

If nothing else it made me better.

Over on one of my “regular visit” sites is a timely blog post titled Kill Spam Comments On Your Blog For Good With ReCaptcha by Ryan Dube. Great article and has inspired me to try reCaptcha to my blog. We’ll see how it improves the situation. I think a lot of it is automated comment spam of the back of a script as opposed to someone sitting there typing it in, so hopefully reCAPTCHA will sort it out.

f you run a WP Installation go have a look at the article. I will as ever let you know how I get on.

On a side note: I thought I had some spam problems, in one of the screen shots shows 357 spam messages, now that’s quite a few more than me!

Update: 5 days later and there’s so sign of the constant stream of spam in the comments has dried up. This makes me think I was right on the automated spam being the source.

I’m getting sick of spam on my site, as this is my personal blog and in places I’ve shared quite personal things like my break up with my girlfriend and on some of the personal stuff having them spammed is kinda hurtful. I report spammers to their ISP, I also report to the host of their purile websites as well were possible.

This week I’m experimenting with some alternative ways of dealing with spam, sadly there’s going to have to be some changes.

I am fed up with dealing with loads of spam several times a day.

When I’ve decided on a solution will blog about it.

*rant*
Today I’ve had spam from the same bottom feeding pond scum spammer offering me
breast implants…
teeth whitening…
weight loss secrets…
p**is girth and length increase…
and both Valium and Viagra….

Oh and I missed off “teen acne treatment”…. Who or what the f**k does this spammer think I am?
*rant over*