Thursday 1 February 2024

Question to Fellow Bloggers: What to do About Bot Accounts sending Spam to the Comments Section of Posts?

This is bugging me. 

I moderate all comments so I see them coming in. An obvious Spam comments totally unrelated to the Post bit sneaking in a link to an "online gambling site". I click on the ID to see who the person is and it is obviously a Bot account. I click "Report Abuse" and say it is a Spam/Bot giving details. This all takes time. I get a "Thank You" (NoReply) email back from Google. No action seems to be taken though. They still dribble in and I am pretty sure I am seeing teh same accounts being used.

Anyone else suffering from the same scenario?

As I have "Moderation On" in my settings they don't make it through to the public page.

Slowly but surely it will fill blogs with Spam links. 

Is there a better way of reporting it to Google?  


21 comments:

daveb said...

I feel like Blogger is an unwanted step child of google. Definitely not a lot of resources directed this way. It's one of those unfortunate things....what are your other options? I remember looking at wordpress and then reading about people fleeing wordpress for blogger due to their planned fee hikes (since rolled back).

Robert (Bob) Cordery said...

Geordie,

Like you, I’ve been plagued by this at various times and moderate all comments. I’ve given up reporting spam from bots and other anonymous or obviously fake accounts. I just delete the emails and move on.

All the best,

Bob

Jonathan Freitag said...

SPAM is not much of an issue for me. I may get a few per week and I do not moderate comments unless more than three days old. Most SPAM comments hit posts greater than my moderation threshold and if they wriggle through Google's SPAM filter, I report as SPAM, delete, and move on. With few, it is easy to keep up on maintenance.

Good luck!

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Yeah, it just sucks wasting any time on spam to be honest

Martin Rapier said...

I don't bother with moderation, I just view the comments daily, and as fresh ones sort to the top, I batch tag any obvious spam as spam, then batch delete. I certainly don't manually report them to Google, I rely on its spam algorithms.

For some reason the bots like my post on QRF R35s. I'm always flattered to get spam from the "Peter Hook". I must ask him about Joy Division and New Order some time.

Duc de Gobin said...

I have seen a few on older posts. There was one instance where I got into a blog conversation with an Indian guy trying to sell me tractor parts(!) which ended with 'your move!'...but for the most part, I try to police older post responses and delete spam.
I'm fairly sure google will be useless at policing spam themselves - it's not in their interest to censor 'advertising', no matter how spurious the form of it - though I think slowly, slowly, we are waking up to the less than wholesome 'revenue stream' element of these platforms.
I tend to shy away from putting up personal data where possible.

 Ashley said...

It's PITA, but like cleaning your teeth daily, it maintains blog hygiene.

Independentwargamesgroup said...

I seem to be a favourite target for some far eastern bots. All I do is simply delete them. Sadly its another 'benefit' of the internet. A bit like Russian Brides and Plan my funeral.

A J said...

I moderate my blog. It filters out all those spammers, but I don't bother reporting them, I just delete them.

Shaun Travers said...

It seems to come in waves. Sometimes I get no spam comments for weeks, then I get 1-3 a day for a week or two. Definitely have seen more spam in the last week than for the last month or two. I don't moderate my comments and the Google spam filter does not seem to bad, letting through only a few at most. It does not take much time for me to process the spam so not concerned by it. But that is just for me - sounds like you have enough volume for it to be annoying :-(

tim said...

I always have moderation on. I get more of these than actual comments from real people at this point. I just mark them as spam and delete the notification and move on. Doesn't seem to stop them, though, so I'm not sure how marking them as spam is any better than just deleting...

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Thanks, it is "nice" to know I am not alone.
Moderate and delete seems to be the best course of action.
Thank you for your thoughts!

Mark

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Report them as Spam - leave it a week - and then delete them..

Whisperin Al said...

I don’t moderate comments on my blog and the automatic spam filter seems pretty good as it catches the overwhelming majority of them so they don’t make it onto the posts; but you do still need to keep an eye as a few will slip through.

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Well they still keep a coming!

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

...think of it as a compliment.. :o)) I've reported the person/thing/them who's spamming my Blog half a dozen times and Blogger have done nothing about him.. person/thing/them has had an account since August last year.. I think as the others have said, there just aren't that many people looking after Blogger any more...

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Good point Steve-the-wargamer -- It kind of makes you wonder if I should start thinking about backing off my blog off-line - even hard copy!

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Geordie - Bob Cordery has printed off hard copies of his blog, I think he did a post on it a long time ago.. it is also possible to back your blog up to Wordpress (the other blogging platform) by using the import function on Wordpress (and then just not publishing it/make it public) I do that every 6 months or so just so I don't lose everything if the worst happens... there's no indications whatever that Google will close it down though...

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Note to self:

melody
zoom88
zoom8801m
sa2405
naza

Are bots not "people"

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

As is:

123pro1

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Great satisfaction in deleting Bot comments .. evil laugh