Strange spam comments copied from other sites

  • Resolved _croberson

    (@_croberson)


    9 years, 5 months ago

    Hey all,

    Between 5:09 and 6:08 this morning we got 5 strange comments on 5 different blogs on our site. These comments are obviously spam but are unlike other spam I’ve seen and I’ve been trying to discern why they were made at all.

    All 5 are semi-revelvant (correct general theme, but not correct specific topic) to the page they’re posted on, and each is an exact copy of a comment made somewhere else on the web – one is a youtube comment, one is a yahoo answer, one is from a different company in our industry’s blog, etc. In each case, the links have been stripped from the comment (the text removed completely) and, in addition, one word in the comment (early on in the text but not the same position each time) has been scrambled, although the first and last letters are unchanged, as in rollers -> rlerlos or condition -> coiiotndn.

    The user info for each comment links to a different Facebook page (all newer accounts, from different parts of the world, with very few or no friends) and all are from different ip addresses. Their emails are all jumbles of letters and numbers, registered to different common mail services (gmail, yahoo, mail, etc.)

    We have Akismet for spam filtering, very little web traffic and no legitimate user comments (small site, primarily just for lead generation).

    Has anyone dealt with problems like this before? I can’t ascertain why someone would go through this much trouble since I don’t see how anyone is benefiting from the comments (no links, etc) and they seem too stupid for an actual malicious user to be making them (the text is not exactly relevant to the page, just on the correct general topic).

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    The theory is, the bots grab comments made by (possibly) humans which have (clearly) already passed some sort of anti-spam measure.

    That’s really all there is about it though, the end game as always is to get their URL in front of someone’s face and hopefully under their click, and really the bots will just do whatever they can to make that happen.

    Make sure you mark them as spam for Akismet so it can learn and adapt.

    Thread Starter _croberson

    (@_croberson)

    Perfect answer, thank you. Glad to know that there isn’t something greater going on.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    You’re welcome!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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