Recent Spam Comments and Likes
-
A month or two ago, my site had multiple spam comments (that look like duplicates) and also spam likes. I had posted about this (in a few posts) to alert my blog followers, but no one has an idea to prevent this.
Is there any way to prevent/decrease spam comments and likes?Another issue I had was the regular (non-duplicate) spam comments, so I made a page with some of them to alert others. I also had Akismet set to ‘strict’ because I know I will be getting spam comments I would not share to anyone (either in a post or add to the page). It works really great, but numbers still increase.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
Hi, we are working hard to get ahead of the spammers, but they are persistent. What I suggest is to check at My Sites > Settings > Discussion. Set Before a comment appears so that comment authors have to have a previously approved comment. That way you can review those comments and mark the ones that are spam as such so that Akismet can learn.
As a temporary measure, if you are getting a lot of spam likes on your blog posts, follow the procedure here to disable likes.
-
-
I had a few issues with my comments being spam-liked (and maybe a few posts), but it doesn’t bother me as much as spam comments.
-
That setting doesn’t prevent spam comments, no. Our spam filter, Akismet does that. But spammers come up with new ways to get around the spam filter all the time, so we need to keep training Akismet to recognise new types of spam.
By enabling comment moderation on your site the comments are held back and only published on your site once you review them. That way the spam never appears on your site where other can see it. And then if you mark the comments as spam, it trains Akismet to treat similar comments as spam going forward, and it will eventually start filtering them as well.
We do try to block spam-liking as well, but it’s a bit harder – spam comments are blocked mostly based on the language of the comment itself, but likes don’t have that. So with spam likes we look for behaviour patterns – someone who likes a high number of comments in a very short time is clearly not actually reading the comments, so we block them on that, but that can only happen after they’ve liked a certain number of comments in a specific time period.
-
Ah, I see… So I’ll wait for more spam comments so Akismet can recognise them…
I do moderate all comments, and the spam comments that still get through Akismet’s filters are random (not related to the post) and sometimes inappropriate.As for the likes, they’re from different accounts (with a similar username format).
-
-
-
Good thing I have Akismet set to “strict” instead of “safe” or else I would have to deal with more spam comments (which may be inappropriate). (-_-;)
-
We definitely don’t want you to have to deal with those. But spammers are clever, and Akismet sometimes need human help to beat them. But it learns fast, so don’t hesitate to click that Spam button on the ones that do make it through.
-
Alrighty. I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing already.
At least the ones that are spam end up in the spam folder automatically, so I don’t need to mark them as spam.
-
Just to let you know, my blog gets likes even though there is no notification for some of them. What I mean is some posts get liked and there is no notification telling me that happened. Are those likes considered as spam likes or something else?
-
Hi there,
Are those likes considered as spam likes or something else?
You can tell if they come from a spammer by looking at their site. But that’s not always a clear indication. Likes, since they don’t have any content like comments cannot be filtered.
-
Um… I don’t know who liked my posts because there is no notification and it doesn’t say who liked it. So that’s why I put that question.
—
I put a post, then it gets a like. I check my notifications, but there’s no indication of who did it. So that’s why I asked. -
-
One of my newest posts, which is titled “August Stuff”. It had also happened a few months ago, but I don’t remember what the post names were.
-
I can see the post, https://fantagians4ever.wordpress.com/2018/08/12/august-stuff/, received a like in the Reader by someone with the display name Sumerella. Their account is not blocked from liking as far as I can see, so this might just be a glitch.
If you notice more cases of this happening, please let us know the post links where you saw you received a like and we can investigate. But without more information there’s not much we can do at this point.
-
Oh… It should be a glitch in the system, since the person has a verified account and there was no notification of them liking the post.
I’ll keep update with this glitch.
-
-
Update on spam comments:
I have created a page on my blog of some collected spam comments, as I mentioned in the first post. The page is called “Spam Comment Examples” under “Info for Commenting”, which is pretty much begins with what I want others to know followed by a list of comments (starting from the date I created the page). Not all spam comments are there, but I’ve been updating it whenever there is another spam comment, so the page gets longer each time. As of this post, there are 19 comments (all are numbered) and the 19th one was added right before this post.
- The topic ‘Recent Spam Comments and Likes’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 