Scam, Spam, Sham
Oh! They do rhyme. But I don’t like it when my emails and my comment moderation queue are filled with scams, spams and shams.
How many times have I won the lottery? If I believe my emails, I won everyday. What a wonderful world that would be! Oh common, let me wake up to reality. But how do we stop those spams? I list down some ways here, but there really is no way to totally stop spam:
1. Set up a dummy email, usually a gmail because it has a forwarding ability.
2. Use that dummy email when you sign up in forums, and other websites
3. Use your real email only on secured sites
4. Use filtering programs
5. Don’t immediately believe what you read.
6. If it says it comes from ebay or paypal, check the email they sent it to. Usually, they sent it to the dummy email.
7. Don’t display your real email.
8. Use the bcc feature in forwarding emails, especially if it is not business related.
Blog
Every time I check my blog dashboard, I see comments in my moderation queue. Excited I might be, but those spam comments somewhat kill my pleasure. How did they? But there’s also a possibility that these spammers don’t know that they’re sending out spams. You know those viruses and certain scripts.
So why am I not installing an anti-spam plug-in in my blog? With all those spam comments, I should do so now. I am procrastinating again. Here’s a list of 4 anti-spam plug-ins for Wordpress that you and I should try:
1. Akismet
2. Captcha
3. WP-SpamFree
4. Math Spam Protection.
Remember that spammers will never stop spamming and even make more innovative ways of doing their thing. Manual spam control is still applicable.
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Ceblogger is a CPA trapped in his cubicle while his mind wanders outside watching the world, and exploring possibilities his mind conceived.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
I usually find that my Akismet always has spam comments on things like drug sites etc, I mean it’s a music blog for crying out loud! Mind you WP-reCaptcha certainly helps reduce those pesky sites quite a bit..
July 17th, 2008 at 2:34 am
I’ve dropped akismet since there are also some valid comments that gets to be deleted automatically. What I maintained was some post validation tool like write-this-word-to-validate stuff.
What I do also is that I manually approve comments. That way too, I get to read all the comments that gets posted on my blog and I could respond to these right away.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:38 am
and oh, those lottery winnings I receive from somewhere in Africa or London? I just donate it to UNICEF. No matter how low-key you might be to the point of not betting anything on anything, you still get to win through some random stuff, don’t you? Perhaps miracles? hehehe
July 18th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I receive mine from UK …
July 18th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Bro,
We share the same sentiments. i haven’t posted my latest articles about this topic. You see, spammers have become more intelligent now. For example, they will post comments about your articles (which in many cases are relevant). Most of these comment spammers are not bloggers. They own websites relative to real estate, pharma companies, etc. Some of the links they leave behind are also redirected somewhere else. It’s been my research for more than 5 months now and honestly speaking, I’m getting tired of dealing and deleting spams.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Just like Jessie, the spam comments lately are getting more creative. On the average, I get 20 to 30 spam comments everyday - but akismet used to queue all of them, However, lately, still a few are not captured by akismet. Good thing I put all comments (esp first time comments) to moderation- else its a disaster.