Monday, March 4, 2013

Blogging Tip...Dealing With Spam on Your Blog

Today's blogging tip is about Spam...the junk email spam, not the spiced ham food product!! (the "sp" from spiced and the "am" from ham equals Spam.) That was my foody tip for today! Lol

I can't say I dislike both types of spam, because I haven't had the food product since I was little, but I really dislike the computer version.

What exactly is spam? In a word...junk. According to Microsoft, spam is "any kind of unwanted communication".

In most articles that I've read, email spams are unwanted, unsolicited emails to large groups for advertising of some product and are usually harmless.

However, when some spam emails try to trick the reader into doing something involving identify theft or fraud, that is called phishing. Please DO NOT be tricked by email scams that say they want you to change your pass word or enter any sort of personal numbers, unless you know the request is from the actual source.




Today's blogging tip is pretty much about the harmless email spam that I receive and you may also receive in your inbox and on your blog in the form of a comment.

As I mentioned earlier, most spam is trying to get you to click on their website, because they are selling something or they want you to click on the product website.

Here is a screen shot of a comment that I received in my email inbox. I have all my comments sent to my email, so I read it there first.

Usually the name is obscure, but they are getting smarter. They open a blogger account with no profile info so they can comment as a "blogger".

See at the end of the comment where there is the word "Curtain" in a link form? If you clicked on this it would lead you to a website to sell you curtains. They usually "match" the topic of the post to the link.

My post was on how to make lined drapes...hence the "curtains" link.


This is what it looks like in the comment section under that post. This Michelle Smith is not only are they trying to get "me" to click on it in my email, she is trying to get "you" to click on it too from the comment section.


This "Michelle Smith" hit me again on another post to advertise Hunter Douglas (which sells window treatments). It really is free advertising for them.


Well, let's take care of them!!

Go to your dashboard and click on COMMENTS.


In the comments section, there are 2 parts...published and spam.

Published are the comments that make it to your blog posts.

Spam are the ones that Blogger catches and sends to the spam box.


When you find the unwanted comment by post title or date, just hover over that comment and your choices are REMOVE, DELETE or SPAM.

In this example, I've clicked REMOVE CONTENT.


That just removes the comment words. Still keeps the authors name on the post.


Here is a screen shot of the comment if you pick REMOVE. It says "this comment was removed by blog administrator"



 If you pick DELETE, it removes everything from the post.


See? Gone!!


If you select SPAM, it marks it as spam and sends it to your spam box.


Click your SPAM folder every once in awhile to delete and to check if some good comments haven't made it through.

If there are good comments from real bloggers that haven't made it to one of your posts, just click NOT SPAM and it will send it to that post where it belongs.

The rest of the bad ones can be checked off and deleted.



Look at this comment on one of my posts...

I think they're trying to sell me golf supplies!! What do you think?


I try to clean out my comment spam box and my email spam box at least once a week if not more if I see a flood of them.

Hope this was helpful not only for spam, but for unwanted comments in general.

Happy Blogging,
~Karen~

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29 comments:

  1. Thanks, Karen! So far I have not gotten many unwanted comments on my blog. I was puzzled by one recently and removed it and then wondered if I had just read it wrong. I think it may have been something just like the first example you posted. Now I know how to better handle those puzzling words that may come my way ... :) Pat

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  2. Thank you I changed my settings because of all the spam I was getting but I may have missed some so if you are looking where to buy certain pills for men head over to my blog I'm sure my comments could head you in the right direction , lol !

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    Replies
    1. I had a few comments for the little blue pill too...Lol Couldn't delete those fast enough!!

      Delete
  3. thanks for this post Karen. I was plagued by spam a while back and it was so annoying. I really didnt want to enable word verification so instead I banned anonymous comments and it seemed to do the trick. not had any for a while now :)

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  4. Thank you for this helpful post.

    I received my first 'spiced ham' from an anonymous sender yesterday.

    Love your blog by the way,

    Have a good day : )

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  5. Thanks for this Karen. I've noticed lately some of these comments getting through to my blog comments. I knew how to delete them but they weren't coming up in my email. So unless I check through my whole blog I have no idea they've been posted. Even some anonymous legitimate comments aren't coming into my email. Could you help me with this problem. Thanks. Your blog is always so informative.

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  6. Wonderful tips! I just found tons of spammy comments in my spam folder! It felt great to delete them!

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  7. I have been thinking of setting up a blog, but if I do I will wiser, from your tutorial about spam. But, really we should take pity on those who need the little blue pills. LOL. Thanks again for the info.

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  8. Thank you for your comment. I was not as clever as you at first and thought the spam was just nice people linking back to their blog. How did they get through word verification???

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  9. Great tips ~ some of the spam I get cracks me up ~ the way they try to sneak in there. I think one day I should patch all of the ridiculous comments together and create a blog post.

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  10. Thank You very Much. I love the work you do its very helpful and informative.

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  11. Sometimes I get spam comments in my e-mail but when I go to delete them, they are no where to be found on blogger or on the actual blog...It is just so annoying! Thank you for all the great blog tips you share :) They are VERY helpful!

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  12. I found this some time ago and am sooooo glad Blogger has this capacity to identify SPAM without word verification turned on and sends the annoying comments DIRECTLY to the COMMENTS - SPAM folder I would rather have to clear out my SPAM folder than not have comments from folks who don't like word verification. Thanks for your informative techy blogging posts!

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  13. Thaks! Being new to blogging I was worried about that happening.

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  14. Interesting how "Michelle" copies the most recent comment then add the link. I thought I saw a duplicate comment recently on one of my posts. I'll need to go back and see if there is a link on the second one.

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  15. Thank you Karen for covering the specifics. I had not checked my spam section yet, but will soon. And I appreciate you taking the time to better educate those of us with little time to keep up with technology. By the way, would you like to adopt a Flemish bunny? LOL

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  16. It would be nice if there was a way to ban any comments that contain a link in them as well. Maybe that technology is coming soon since now the spammer's aren't anonymous and are passing through those filters.

    Ilene

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  17. Great tips. I, too, have all comments sent to me via email - I learned the hard way that spammers like to comment on old posts. Now, I have word verification on any post over a week old, which helps weed out the spammers.

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  18. Karen... as always you are timely. I have gotten my first spammer... luckily it is older posts they go for but they are a tad suggestive in their comments... I didn't know I could spam it so I will go check that out now! Thanks :) Kathi

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  19. Great tip! I didn't realize people were doing this. I will be much more attentive to the comments on my post. Especially the older one's. I do have all comments come to my email so I can even see the old comments. Thanks for sharing with us.

    Oh ya.....we still do eat spam! :)

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  20. Thanks for this post. I learned some new tricks!!
    I have received spam in my comments also but I have my comments set up that I have to approve them first. When someone comments, it comes to my email and I view it first then publish or delete it. This way spam never makes it to my blog posts.

    I will be checking my spam folder too. I never knew it was there!!
    ~ Darlene

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  21. Oh my.... talk about spam. I get so much of it. They even want me to check out the nude girls.... thats the last thing I want to see. LOL..... I already do all you said and it works well.

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  22. I thought getting rid of the option to comment as anonymous would take care of my heavy spam issue. But, they're getting craftier. As you've mentioned, they're setting up accounts so they can comment as a "real" person. Such a pain in the butt. At least getting rid of them is pretty easy, as you've shown.

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  23. I got smacked with a stackload of spam a couple of months ago and changed the comments so I have to approve them first. I haven't had nearly as many pings since :)

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  24. I ended up requiring my approval for blog comments. It's a drag--the poster doesn't have the satisfaction of seeing their comment right away, and I have to go through and "approve". Which is easy enough--unless I am out of town or on a school field trip or whatever.

    I got little blue pills, hot women, etc etc. It was just bad.

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  25. I've been hit recently with tons of spam as well. I already had my blog set up so that I had to approve all comments, but it was still annoying to get all the emails alerting me to new comments when it was just spam. I had to finally reinstate my word verification to stop the spam. This is unfortunate since it deters most of my readers from commenting. I was hoping there was a way to tell Blogger not to send me comment notifications to my email, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. Do you know how? I'd love to see a tutorial if there is a way. I would then be able to get rid of word verification and just check my blog's new comments when I log in and not have to get a deluge of emails from Blogger.

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  26. Thanks for this! I never realized that clicking spam didn't delete them outright. Just went back and deleted the bunch of them, thanks!

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  27. I can do this part, I'm just tired of the 25 spam comments I've received TODAY, and many of them made it past the spam filter, into my comments. I've had to go in and delete them, both on my blog, and in my email. What a pain. I wish these people had something better to do with their time that pester us.

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  28. Hey Karen, thanks for this post. I received my first spam comment today, and put it into my spam folder right away! I love that feature!
    Val
    artsybuildinglady

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Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment...I just love hearing from you!

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