As we were all studying, sleeping, and wasting time watching random Youtube videos late last night, something insidious was afoot. Beginning around 1:00am this morning, a serial spammer hit the Unofficial Stanford Blog, posting spam in the comment sections of nearly all the blog entries for the month of May.
The issue of serial spammers is not new to campus. When the Stanford Daily first launched a comment section on their website this academic year, it was hit with similar problems. To combat the problem, the Daily installed software that detected spam entries and deleted them.
The Stanford Blog also has a mechanism to prevent serial spamming. Posting members are given the option to manage their entries, including comments. However, a spammer's post is published before a poster has a chance to edit(delete) it. The Stanford Blog should have an option that doesn't allow comments to be published unless approved by the poster of the entry.
Comments (12)
To Anthony Sanchez:
Do you understand, that this process require to keep human person to monitor and approve/disapprove all entries? The more popular is the site, the more humans needed for that.. Even for comments deletion, it's still time needed..
I think, comments section form should have at least such part like this - it would make all auto-posting software unable to post comments automatically..
Posted by Friend | May 16, 2007 2:53 PM
Posted on May 16, 2007 14:53
P.S. where other comments passed away? I was repliying to previous one..
Posted by friend | May 16, 2007 2:55 PM
Posted on May 16, 2007 14:55
Can you please elabortie on how you are able to combat serial blog spamming. I just recently opened up my blog for user comments, and get hit with around 20 spam messages a day. Any help would be great!
Posted by YouTube Addict | May 25, 2007 1:21 PM
Posted on May 25, 2007 13:21
I believe you have to install a program on the server from which your blog operates.
One of the popular ways in which a program will combat spam (which is done by bots), is to require certain phrases or letters/numbers be typed in first.
Posted by Anthony | May 25, 2007 1:53 PM
Posted on May 25, 2007 13:53
Welcome to life. The world of business and human ingenuity in general.
If it was not for human ingunuity we would still be living on the grassslands as hunter gathers .
Everything has good and bad and i guess you have to put up with it is a nuisance. If it is a major nuisance and threatens your life , family and job I guess you take action.
There are services to screen spam. If the guy is that obvious and indescrete the services will catch it.
It is a compliment in a way that your blogs were caught by his system or him persoannly.
Remember though it is a cat and mouse game - as in computer spyware. You do this and they do that to evade the system.
It is amazing that this phenomonem would be news to you.
Computer technology has good and bad. A double edged sword.
What is amazing is that the person would dislike his job / employer so much as to make a site and you would not appreciate the humor.
Take care welcome to life
Posted by Frank Dowling | July 8, 2007 5:45 AM
Posted on July 8, 2007 05:45
Hi there,
If you use Blogster you can set it up so people have to log on in order to post. Thus you control who you allow to be a member of your Blog.
Posted by Allan Barker | July 21, 2007 7:45 AM
Posted on July 21, 2007 07:45
I'm not sure what antispam measures you re taking, however I would think if you are using wordpress, then you might want to activate the akismet plugin, which can be configured to reduce a significant amount of spam. I have a few sites in entertainment, and they are spammed on a regular basis. You see comments linking to pharmaceutical ads and everything else. There are legitimate comments however that contain links, primarily due to the commented taking the time to post, and being deserving of a linkback to thier works. Hope you get you spam issues under control!
Posted by Mark | July 25, 2007 7:46 AM
Posted on July 25, 2007 07:46
I agree with Allan, one very good way to stop spam is to make users sign up to leave a comment. many spammers get put off by this
Posted by website design worcester | August 5, 2007 9:09 AM
Posted on August 5, 2007 09:09
Spamming does suck, but don't you have that tool that disallows this issue? Fixing shouldn't be a difficult task though.
Posted by Apclik | August 20, 2007 5:13 PM
Posted on August 20, 2007 17:13
This is a very animated post...lol
Posted by Davis | August 20, 2007 5:15 PM
Posted on August 20, 2007 17:15
Hello everyone,
I want to invite you to visit this blog. It's very interesting because it shows health videos with topics like asthma, depression and HIV. Videos are funny but they contain important messages and information.
Here the URL:
http://prescriptionvideos.blogspot.com
Posted by Camilo | November 9, 2007 1:07 PM
Posted on November 9, 2007 13:07
The problem is that the software can only detect serial spammers, with content like porn... Of course it's better than nothing at all.
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Posted by Wedding Album Design | March 20, 2008 2:54 AM
Posted on March 20, 2008 02:54