Today I had a batch of comments trapped in moderation which I strongly suspect to be a type of spam (and apologies if I am wrong) but I let them through anyway. It will be obvious which ones I am referring to.
There are four comments from two different names. Both names link to websites for arty-crafty products which have a near-identical layout/design, and both names were posting from the same IP address.
So why did I let them through?
Well there is a possibility that someone who runs a couple of businesses is taking a genuine interest, and when posting a comment links to their own sites. I know if I had a business site I would continue to take a genuine interest in other blogs and post comments, and might well link to my site while I am doing that.
Granted it is more likely to be an attempt at link-spamming or spamdexing, trying to inflate the Google-ranking of a site by getting a link to it on a respectable, prominent, well-read site. Relatively speaking of course. I used to get several hundred such spam comments every day until I installed a plug-in so effective and low-maintenance that I can’t remember offhand what it is called. (Spam Karma – just looked it up) and they were a genuine nuisance.
They were generated by bots and attempted to post the same inane comment to every single post in the archives. They were nearly always trying to promote porn sites as well.
So I decided to give the current commenter the benefit of the doubt, with the knowledge that even if I am wrong the comments are at least written by a real person, relevant to the post they are on, and more coherent and sensible than some of the comments which I know to be real. Not only that, but there are only a few of them. If its spam it is spam I can live with (but if dozens or hundreds of comments come from the same source tomorrow its going straight on the blacklist!)
Hi I am both new to computers and blogs having only recently purchased our first PC. I came across your website from another blog. Found the articles quite interesting and commented filling in all the fields which are readily available to fill in. My wife who also is fortunate enough that I both share the same computer as her and talk to her about what I have recently read also visited your blog and also left comments much like other visitors to your blog. Neither of us were aware that leaving our website address was one of the deadly sins. However I will make a note that sites that don’t have blogs, aren’t part of the club and read more than one article at a time shouldn’t leave a web address to show who they were, When We visit your site in the future. Thank you for taking the time to reading this you can now press the blacklist button.
No problem – there is no private club or clique.
Having had so much spam comment traffic that I had to change hosts earlier this year I am more cautious than I used to be, and I’m quite happy to hold my hands up to being over-cautious