Hi, i read your blog from time to time and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a ton of spam? If so how do you control it, any plugin or something you can suggest? I get so much it’s driving me insane so any help is much appreciated.

Ah, spam. Fewer than 1% of comments even has the potential to be genuine. The rest are just bots crawling the net, looking for comment forms to fill with their spammy comments and vandalize unmoderated blogs.

What’s spam? Spam is now more sophisticated than it used to be. It used to be bots would drop in pages of links about online drugs, porn, insurance, and tons of other stuff, just in case 1 in 1 billion readers aka suckers actually would sort through their scam/malware links and click through, thus receiving in all likelihood a good dose of malware while paying for fake drugs or porn which would actually be free somewhere else.

Nowadays spam bots usually submit generic-sounding posts, like “Great article!”, “Loved it!”, “You have made some very insightful suggestions here”. They post comments about the blog theme and its colors. Or coding mistakes in their own blog. Sometimes they post comments that are clearly off-topic, though they would be appropriate on someone else’s blog – but certainly not on a “Breakfast potatoes” post.

Sometimes they post off-topic questions to me, as though they expect me to respond in the comment thread.

Rarest of all is the true comment or question. I do enjoy them, but unfortunately they often get missed in the flood of spam.

The fact is that most spam comments are posted by usernames that indicate what the underlying spam link is about. Reader Cheap vicodin links to a url that clearly intends to sell you cheap vicodin, even though the comment may read “Great job, bookmarked it!”

So what do I do? First of all, I use a number of anti-spam plugins, like Akismet, Bad Behavior, and Spambam. I do read through my spam before emptying the folder. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is and is not. Almost always I edit comments to strip off questionable links.

Of course, if you’re a spambot, you won’t be reading this. But if you’re a human and you want to ask me an off-topic or semi-off-topic question, there’s an email link to get in touch with me. Too many times I have responded, only to find the same off-topic comment attached to other blogs I manage.

Only on-topic comments get posted, so if you’re a human being spreading spam, don’t bother.

Spam control is a wonderful thing.

©2012 Food, cooking, eating, and gluten-free me. All Rights Reserved.