Spam Comments from Verified Accounts
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I have gotten some spam comments from verified wordpress accounts and I made a post about it as well. I found it quite interesting because I had the “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” setting checked. I went into more detail on my post and here’s the link to it (fantagians4ever.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/oh-look-verified-account-spam). I’ve been dealing with spam comments and it’s been ok, but getting spam comments from verified accounts is something that confused me.
After I shared the post, I changed the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” setting. I don’t know what would happen, so I’m testing it now.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I changed the post’s name because it sounded irregular, so now it’s called “Oh, Look. Spam from Verified Accounts” (at fantagians4ever.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/oh-look-spam-from-verified-accounts).
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Hi there,
A verified WordPress.com account is not something special. It’s basically all the accounts that have gone through the process of activation through the verification email we sent when they first registered.
Also, with the comment settings you have enabled spam comments will still get through and they’ll still land in the spam queue of course.
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Is there a way to see their email address(es) when they comment? My followers comment, so their email addresses appear, along with their blog links and IP addresses; but what about those accounts? All I could see is the linked site,
which I removed for the safety of others,and the IP address.Okay, so if I do what I normally do, will the comments from those accounts get blocked in the future?
Sorry for the multiple questions.
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but what about those accounts? All I could see is the linked site, which I removed for the safety of others, and the IP address.
All comments left on your site should show the email address of the commenter. It’s not possible to leave a comment on any WordPress.com site without providing an email address, and that email address is visible if you click user-info on the comment at My Site ->Comments. Are you saying you’ve received comments that don’t show this information?
If you get another comment like that, please don’t delete it and let us know so we can take a look. But it’s impossible for us to investigate the issue if you delete the examples.
Also note that pingbacks are not comments, but a notification directly from another site or post that it linked to your post, and as such they do not show an email address. Pingbacks are always held for moderation, regardless of your site’s settings, and if you don’t want to display a pingback on your site, simply delete it when it comes in.
To block pingbacks from coming in in the first place, you need to disable them on the post itself.
Okay, so if I do what I normally do, will the comments from those accounts get blocked in the future?
What do you mean “what you normally do”? If you get a spam comment, click the Spam button to mark it as spam and to train our filters to block similar comments in future, and at My Site ->Comments you can also click the Block User button under User Info to add that person to the comments blacklist, or you can add them to the blacklist directly at My Site ->Settings ->Discussion.
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Um… That’s alot to reply to… I’ll just go in order, I guess…
Are you saying you’ve received comments that don’t show this information?
Yes, that is true.
If you get another comment like that, please don’t delete it and let us know so we can take a look. But it’s impossible for us to investigate the issue if you delete the examples.
Ok, but it is ok if I screenshot it, then delete them? Or do I need to leave them in the spam folder? I found them there, so I screenshotted them, made a post, then deleted them from the folder.
I do know what are pingbacks, and I’m fine with those.
What do you mean “what you normally do”?
I normally do is leave the comments in the spam folder, but I take a screenshot of them and add them to a page or report in a post, depending on the kind. For some reaosn, ALL the spam comments are already in the spam folder, so I don’t need to mark them as spam.
I think this is all I need to add for now. Please let me know if you are confused about anything. Thanks.
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There’s more recently, and I made another post about them. In my posts I add a screenshot of all the comments, but usually at a view smaller than 100% to fit more comments in each picture or to save storage space. Anyway, the post I mentioned is Second Follow-Up on Spam Comments from Verified Accounts. It’s longer than my other posts because of the added site links, which lead to an inappropriate site. In my post, I had blocked out all the mentions of the link and the site name to keep people from looking it up. I added the whois data (from two sites) in case if people were wondering.
(I’m also reporting the site to the registrar, to get it removed/blocked.)I could assume there might be more spam comments from verified accounts, since this happened for a few days already.
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Ok, but it is ok if I screenshot it, then delete them? Or do I need to leave them in the spam folder? I found them there, so I screenshotted them, made a post, then deleted them from the folder.
No, that is not okay. We need to be able to see the actual comments.
For some reaosn, ALL the spam comments are already in the spam folder, so I don’t need to mark them as spam.
That’s how the spam filter works. If the comments are already in the spam folder, there is no issue here. If they’re in the spam folder it means they are being filtered as they’re supposed to, and our system will automatically delete them after 30 days.
You don’t need to add these to your blacklist, and you don’t need to delete them. You don’t need to do anything at all to comments that land in that folder, and there’s no reason for you to ever visit that folder unless a blog user contacts you to say their comments on your site are being mistakenly marked as spam.
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You are able to see the spam folder?
I’m really used to deleting them after screenshotting because I don’t like having any comments in that folder…Well, I visit the folder in case a non-spam comment goes there, which had happened before. I keep checking to see if there’s a comment that shouldn’t be there (accidentally marked as spam).
So, I guess everything is good so far…?
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Staff can access all areas of your site for support purposes, yes.
If spam comments are going to the spam folder then everything is working as it’s supposed to.
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I didn’t know that…
Does that mean I could leave the comments in the spam folder after I finish my reports…? I could delete them after you take a look. -
You can leave them in the spam queue and they will eventually be deleted in 30 days. There’s no need to manually delete them from the spam queue.
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I have a habit of that now, but okay.
And there’s a comment in the folder if you want to check it out. The link I removed from the comment is different than the previous one(s), but it still mentions the previous link(s). By the way, I also made a new post about it.
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That’s a typical spam comment and as you can see it proves the effectiveness of our spam filters.
Also, there’s no need to post about those spammers in your blog as that’s a normal thing for all public sites (not only on WordPress.com) that have comments enabled.
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But what about the missing email address? That’s unusual compared to the other ones I found…
There isn’t anything much to post about, but I don’t mind if it’s about the spam comments. I think it’s interesting for some people to read about, despite it being on a non-related blog.
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Hi, sorry for the delay, I hope that you don’t mind me asking something.
When you go to http://fantagians4ever.wordpress.com/wp-admin/options-discussion.php and scroll to “Other Comment Settings”, do you have this checkbox ticked?
Comment author must fill out name and email
This will ensure that comments have an email address, although granted, there’s no way of verifying if it’s a real email. If you’d like it to be a real email, you may wish to tick the next checkbox which forces commenters to have a WordPress.com account to comment, but this will prevent some of your viewers from commenting.
Thank you. :)
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Hi mimy2788,
But what about the missing email address?
I noticed there are a number of spam comments that don’t contain email addresses in the comment information, is that what you are referring to? You mentioned removing links from spam comments, did you remove the email address manually?
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@torres126 Yes, I did. for a few weeks. But… the comments are from verified accounts and the email addresses of those accounts did not show (in the comment info).
@gemmacevans Yes, those were what I was referring to. The links were the website links, not the email addresses (I don’t think those can be removed andemail addresses are not links). -
@mimy2788, could you leave a few comments exactly as they come through, no editing at all and no deleting until we have a resolution?
Also, are any of these not going into your spam folder? Generally if they go into spam you don’t need to do anything, unless a valid comment is stuck there.
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Um… I did (and there weren’t any coming since the last one). Apparently, all spam comments on the blog so far has gone directly to the spam folder.
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