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Got spammed by a crappy spammer
August 13th, 2008Aright folks, let’s put aside the serious stuff and let’s have fun a little bit. You know, I like to teach you stuff or tell you what not to do and I might actually post a little something about that later today, but I have a funny thing today for you guys.
Part of blogging is to accept you’ll receive tons and tons of spam. Sometimes, spammers are actually good at writing general enough statements so you believe these are actually related to your post and approve the comment. I call them the Nostradamus of spam: write general enough statements so that even 500 years later, people can relate them to actual events. That’s what being a Nostradamus of spam is, even in 500 years, a blogger could question himself if he should or should not approve the comment! Now, Saturday I got spammed by the opposite of the Nostradamus of spam! Let’s have a look at the comment I received:
Saturday In searching for sites related to AdSense but more specifically to %KEYWORD, I found your site which has great content.
Man, this thing is funny! The dumb dude forgot to change the spam template and replace %KEYWORD% with his own keywords. That’s what I certainly call a failure.
When spamming like that, you know you’ll probably get 98% rejection, but this case is a case of 100% rejection rate. I just wanted to share that with you guys. You too might have some funny spam stories, so feel free to share them! 
24 Responses to “Got spammed by a crappy spammer”
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That is pretty idiotic but it must show that their situation is generally pretty much automated which is worrying!
I rely on a few decent spam plugins for wordpress and they generally doa good job but after reading your post I think I am going to start looking a little closer at the exact text!
Yes it’s definitely an automated script!
I’m curious about the plugins you use for spam. I never spammed and probably never will, but I’m curious to have a look at the tools out there. Would you share that with us?
I’m using Dave’s Spam Karma 2 – it seems to work well and judges the post on a whole number of things. So far I haven’t had a geniune post flagged as spam and a minimal amount gets through
That’s interesting, I will have a look for sure. Thanks olly!
No worries and nice work on the bog as well. It’s a nice refreshing design and I will be visiting regularly!
Thanks olly, glad you like it!
I don’t get lots of comments so far (envious of seohorror
) so I hadn’t bothered with anti-spam plugins. I moderate first comments (if you have one approved you can comment freely after that).
Got few comments recently that were very believable in text (general thanks for helpful post) and had links to very believable in design and very malware-filled pages.
I hadn’t seen actual tools either but it’s huge businees and it seems a lot of work goes into creating tech for it. On the bright side I heard that software generates success reports so smart bots won’t visit you again if they can’t get comments through.
Rarsts last blog post..RSS icon placement
I have had something similar and on one occasion the spammer forgot to put any links in at all, must have realised his mistake and reposted. His second post was around time-stamped about 2 hours later. I wish I had been a fly on the wall when he realised his mistake. I can imagine that he would have to go back and revisit all the sites.
Derek
Okay, that is funny! I have one, some guy commented on my Internet Marketing Blog – “I love to dance, music and trance!” – What an idiot!
Thanks Ben,
JR
JR’s Internet Marketings last blog post..Scour Search Engine – Get Paid to Search
What a coincidence. I was researching methods spammers use to get though the comment moderation, lol. I have this spammer–at least I think ‘they’ are–on my blog who keeps posting comments as if they went with the topic… but they post links back to a commercial website…I won’t say what the website is, but it has something to do with cellphones. I just delete the links and approve them anyway as they seem really interested and know what they are talking about.
Also, not long ago I had to remove my Top Commentators widget after noticing a spammer posting “sincere” thoughts, then later returns to spams the same comment with something extra added just to get to the top of the list. Some of the comments even said the post was stumbled, though it actually wasn’t.
My favorite spammers are the ones who fill my e-mail Inbox with offers to “get my site to the top of Google & Yahoo”. Only trouble is: I’m ALREADY ON TOP OF GOOGLE & YAHOO. (#1 for Sacramento DJs, Sacramento Weddings, etc). The reason they FOUND my site in the first place was because I’m already on top of the SERP………those idiots are sub-moronic!!!
Nice post Ben , I keep getting spam comments from viagra sites
zks last blog post..MSN Ad Centre Sucks ( Part 2 )
i love the comments i get spammed saying “great post really like this content, check this out (enter url), seriously who allows those comments through?
Now i dont get a lot of comments :’( but my sites business related so i would only expect comments from users rather than outsiders anyway, but still….even if i loved having a number other than 0 on my posts i wouldnt allow them.
(note, on comment love carnt you group by IP rather than name? i own 2 spots on your top commentators now becuas ei keey switching my @ lol)
And you just know — know — that someone fell for even that pitiful little piece of spam.
By the way — you should have called your post “I got spammed by a spammy spammer.” Ah, yeah! That just flows…
The Hawgs last blog post..Look! Guns!
the most annoying spammers of all times is the one who floods your comment with urls. I have a blog that allows all readers to comment on it because I really love comments. so far i haven’t received any spam yet, my comments a good as of now. the only spam i got is at my chat box i removed it because i don’t like some flooding. my blog is 1 month of age and i’m very happy that after google’s review they gave me a PR 0. although this is a local blog it gives me a good feedback after all.
jigss last blog post..mga pinangga
LOL That is pretty dumb Ben. I get LOTS of s.p.a.m. Sometimes they don’t even bother to create an intelligent comment and just try sneaking in a bunch of links, which doesn’t work with my settings. Other times they just create really stupid comments which do not even relate to the topic, and are soooo obvious. I have to say that I do get a lot of the ‘Nostradamus’ type spammy comments, as you mention… ~ sigh ~
Well then, do you believe my comment is the real McCoy? LOL
Enjoy!
Teri
~
Teris last blog post..Oregon Salmon threatened by Global Warming
I was on a forum today i wont mention which one but some people on it actually think spamming is ok. On my blog i have had a few spams from bots but nothing major. The funny thing is the comments don’t make any sense and most of the links don’t work. Spam is the scum of the internet and spammers should be killed. Or at least smart enough to not get caught
More than anything, I think that’s pretty funny. Automated spamming is idiotic anyway, but messing it up is even more funny. Spammer software is sure getting better, though. My Askimet filter picks up what could be some fairly “legit” stuff sometimes.
hahahahaha!
Yooooooooo, that joint is crazy man. Yeah, I get some of those Nostradamaus one’s man….they be tricking me sometimes…sometimes I just get rid of them!
Normal Joes last blog post..Tired of this crap man Feedburner stats are wack
hi, great post on blog comments spammers you have here. Currently, i am having alot of spammers in my blog as well. I use wordpress arkiset spam plugin and i automatically block publishing comments with hyperlinks and their ips
I think they are using a type of spammer software.. wondering what is it..
dereks last blog post..Pay off your debts
Ok, sorry guys I didn’t get back to you! I’ve been really busy lately and some of you know I’m working on something great for seohorror.com…
@Rarst: Yeah, there are some good spam bots out there. But as you say, if you don’t have a lot of comments and don’t get spammed too much then you don’t have to bother. You can use Askimet as a spam plugin if you ever want to enable it. It comes with Wordpress so it’s quite straight forward to enable it.
@Derek: haha nice one!
@JR: Maybe he was targeting these keywords but I guess he didn’t post it on the right type of blog! hehe
@Sanjo: Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. Approving the comment but actually deleting the link is a good strategy if you believe the comment is ok but don’t want to give a link back.
@Sacramento: haha excellent one!
What’s the point of spamming me about being on top when I’m on top? hehe
@zk: Thanks! Viagra comments is a cancer! I also get a lot about a drug called Tramadol.
@Tyrone: Thanks for your comment. Yeah, I just realized the comment luv problem. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a way to do it with the IP address and similar problems would occur anyway when people change IP address. I’m afraid there’s not much I can do!
@Hawg: hehe good suggestions
@jigs: Yeah I know, comments filled with URLs are a pain. There’s a setting in wordpress you can enable to automatically request your approval for posts containing over certain number of links!
@Teri: There are so many dumb spammers with dumb comments it’s annoying!
@Marshal: I know it’s a total pain! On small blogs it’s not that much of a problem, but I can imagine the amount of spam blogs like TechCrunch can get!
@Nate:Yes, Askimet is actually pretty good. It’s smarter than us sometimes
@Normal Joe: Having a good night JK?
Thanks for your comment buddy!
@derek: Olly mentionned Dave’s Spam Karma as a spam software he use if you’re interested in learning more about what spammers use!
Man, that was the longest reply ever…
I’ve often thought that it should be possible to write general enough comments to get a descent accept rate, but I’ve yet to see anyone trying it on any of my blogs.
Well you do have a do-follow blog and spamming in you blog make sense. One of my blog is nofollow and even then i use to get silly kind of “general” comments. “Hey this is great post, you may find similar sort of info %keyword% there” etc.
categories of spamming are new to me..
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