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."
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4 comments:
The spam and trolling always seems to be "Anon."
There, fixed it for you. ;-)
There, I just broke it. ;-)
Luke, even your own name has been "borrowed" in the past, whether or not by spammers or jokers, so it doesn't really help!
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!
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