I seem to have more than usual spam activity on my blog – has this been an issue

  • Unknown's avatar
    teresalhardymon · Member ·

    I noticed a ping back today on my blog (Stoneleafandcompany.com) from a blog (DK Matioka) that re-posted an article I wrote for a guest spot on another blog (Decor to Adore). When I went to their site, it seemed off, like it might be spam. Also, today, I had several comments – at least 8 that all appeared to be spam that were not caught by the spam filter ( I have now marked them as spam). The types of comments and misspelled words were a clue that they were spam. When I went to check my spam filter I had over 2,000 recent spam messages. Several of them happened within minutes of my checking out the pingback blog. I think it is possibly a spam blog that is generating spam comments on my blog. I am concerned that after clicking over to the blog, that my computer and blog site may be compromised. This is a link to the re-blogged article (originally posted on Decor to Adore) from the site for DJ Matioka Blog. http://blog.djmatioca.com/2014/05/16/my-favorite-5-teresa

    When I googled DJ Matioka – a lot of suspicious looking info showed up. Can you please help me find out if this is in fact a spam blog and how do I protect my blog from the spam comments. Some of them have filtered through and are shown on my posts, until I discover them and mark them as spam. If this blog is not the reason for the spam, do you have any other clues?
    Thanks,
    Teresa from StoneLeafandcompany.com

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    teresalhardymon · Member ·

    I just looked at the recent spam comments again and they all seem to be related to a FB account. Also, some of them look like replies to other peoples comments and not related to my blog posts at all.

    Also, the DK Matioka blog seemed to have a lot of advertising pop-ups, which further strengthened my suspicions that it might be a spam blog.

    Thanks,
    Teresa (aka Sadie)

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    Hi Teresa,

    I just checked your spam filter, and it does look like you have had quite a bit of recent spam comments with a variety of spammy email addresses. I’m not entirely sure what is causing the issue. It could certainly be the blog you mention. You may want to contact the blog owner and ask if they can remove the link.

    In the meantime, if a lot of the spam comments have a common string of text, I suggest adding that string to your blacklist:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist

    You can use the comment author’s name, IP address, web site, as well as the comment itself. Please make sure the word is not something contained in non-spam comments. For example, if you enter “press” as a blacklisted word, “WordPress” will match.

    Also, please mark those comments as spam instead of just deleting. Our Akismet anti-spam engine tries to learn from a pattern of the comments that are marked as spam.

    For more information about dealing with unwanted comments, check out this link:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/unwanted-comments/

  • Unknown's avatar
    teresalhardymon · Member ·

    Thanks, I have temporarily turned off my comments until I can figure out what is going on. I could not see how to contact the person as they didn’t seem to have any personal info on their site. I hesitated to leave a comment as that gives them access to my email if they are in fact spam. I’ll try to locate a way to contact them and ask them to remove the link.
    Thanks for checking for me.

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    Not a problem Teresa! Please let me know if you need anything else from us.

  • Unknown's avatar
    teresalhardymon · Member ·

    Ok, so even after closing my comments, I am still getting spam comments coming through – they are not showing up on the posts, but they are still showing up in the background. Today I risked it and left a comment on the re-blogged entry asking them to remove it and any links . I have not heard from them yet. I still feel that this site is set up as a spam site and should be monitored. After I left my comment, it redirected me to an ad and ads keep popping up all over the place and sometimes a second page opens up that is an ad, even when I have not clicked anything. When I googled my blog name today there were several pages of items, some of them were websites I’ve never been to and the google picture showed the first line of my article and a lot of the dates were from 2011, 2012 etc. Way before the article was written (May 2014). I can’t help but think that this too is somehow related to this blog.djmatioca.com known as DJ Matioka blog (notice the c in the domain name and the k in the actual blog name.

    I have two concerns. 1. I don’t feel safe turning my comments back on for posts, or even posting at this time until this issue is resolved. 2. I am afraid that somehow it is linking me to other websites without my knowledge and making me look like a spammer.

    I am not savvy enough with technology (graduated college right as computers were the next big thing etc.) to figure this out.

    I did do a whois search on the blog and it appears to be registered to a
    Roger Cardoso de Andrade from Rio de Janeiro, if that is even his real name.

    I am not sure what to do at this point, but his blog does say it is a wordpress.blog . I realize he could be legit. But I suspect that he is clever at disguising his intentions. It is just too coincidental that this issue started after he re-blogged the post.

    Ok, sorry, but this is becoming frustrating. The last time I checked I had 2700 spam comments in my spam file.

    Thanks,
    Teresa (sadie)

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    Hi Teresa!

    You still have comments allowed on posts like “Simplicity Unwrapped In The Kitchen”, which may be why the spam comments are still trickling in. I’ve addressed your concerns below:

    When I googled my blog name today there were several pages of items, some of them were websites I’ve never been to and the google picture showed the first line of my article and a lot of the dates were from 2011, 2012 etc.

    Unfortunately, we have no control over how your site appears in Google search results so I won’t be able to change what results Google returns when you search for your site title. I apologize!

    I don’t feel safe turning my comments back on for posts, or even posting at this time until this issue is resolved.

    I completely understand your concern regarding the spam blog. However, the blog is actually not hosted at WordPress.com. He’s using WordPress.org software on a self-hosted site, which is a bit different. You can read more about the differences here:

    WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

    It also doesn’t seem like he has copied any of your content (content theft) so I’m afraid there isn’t anything I can do to help you get the blogger to take down the link to your blog.

    The only option would be to use the comment blacklist and various comment features to increase the difficulty of getting by your spam filter. This way, the comments aren’t appearing on your site at all. Spam comments by themselves aren’t the issue. The issue is if they begin appearing on your site and cluttering up your comment section with unrelated links.

    Again, you can read more about the comment blacklist here:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist

    I am afraid that somehow it is linking me to other websites without my knowledge and making me look like a spammer

    Unfortunately, as I explained above, we don’t have any way of preventing him from linking your site elsewhere. This would be something you would need to contact the site owner about.

    I realize this is an extremely frustrating experience! I’m happy to help in any way possible with managing the spam comments that are coming in and making sure they don’t appear on your blog. However, I’m unable to contact this blogger directly and ask them to stop.

    I apologize!

  • Unknown's avatar
    teresalhardymon · Member ·

    I understand.
    I did contact him on the 29th and asked him to remove the post and any links to my blog. . I did not hear from him, but I googled the specific url today and it took me to his site and showed a message that the content I was looking for was not found. So, it appears that he did in fact remove my article. I am still seeing spam in the spam filter, but not as heavy as before. over the past 48 hours there has been about 25 compared to over 2 thousand on the 19th alone. I think for now the issue seems to be under control.

    I also marked his ping back as spam, so hopefully if he tries again in future spam will recognize him.

    I think I will keep my comments closed for a while longer to see if that helps.

    Thanks for listening to my frustrations and for helping.

    Teresa

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    Hey Teresa,

    That’s great that it appears as though he’s taken down the article! I really hope that this helps reduce the amount of spam flooding your blog. If there’s anything else I can do to help, please let me know!

  • The topic ‘I seem to have more than usual spam activity on my blog – has this been an issue’ is closed to new replies.