Wednesday, February 26, 2014


Comment spam

I rarely get time to look at the comments which Google throws into the spam box but on looking just now I noticed that there were some legit comments there that had been wrongly classified.  I released those I saw but there were over 2,000 comments in the box so I could only scratch the surface.

I released a lot by "Bird of Paradise"

It would help me to pick up legit comments if you used a handle rather than commenting  anonymously.  The spam always seems to be "Anon."


4 comments:

Use the Name, Luke said...

The spam and trolling always seems to be "Anon."

There, fixed it for you. ;-)

Anonymous said...

There, I just broke it. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Luke, even your own name has been "borrowed" in the past, whether or not by spammers or jokers, so it doesn't really help!

stinky said...


JJR,

A hash string might also help. That's where the user info (e.g. i.p addr and/or browser footprint) is used to generate a random looking string of characters. Thus, my random string might be something like "aj4sd5r". It would be displayed w/my comments.

This would enable us, as users, to distinguish one anon commenter from another, but w/out compromising that person's identity. It also makes impersonation all but impossible.

A site that uses such a hash string in its comment section is Patterico.com.

In the meantime, I encourage all others to use a handle. Mine is already taken, of course, so the supply of desirable handles is ... undiminished!