How To Deal With SPAM Comments!!!

I LOVE Spam comments! They teach me first hand what NOT to do and at the end of the day, I find them funny!

First, I must thank Word Press for their excellent computerized system, which prevents most spam comments to get in the “questionable q. line,” that I take the time to review.

Why do I take the time to read them?

Many times comments are in languages other than English. For instance, I found great comments written in Romanian, my native language, in the “ify” category, just because they were written in Romanian, it didn’t mean they were spam. They were valid comments which I “saved.”

Also,  it may come as a shock, but many people around the world do not write in good English, so I have to play the “guessing” game and respect the effort and make a judgement:

DID THIS PERSON WRITE A COMMENT BECAUSE HE/SHE READ THE POST, OR BECAUSE THEY WANTED THEIR OWN BUSINESS PROMOTED ON A POPULAR SITE?

After almost five years of blogging, I developed an “eye” for fake comments and would like to share with other bloggers my observations.

In my opinion, spam could be divided in a few categories. Here there are a few:

1. The “vague” comment: “Great post! Keep-up the good job!”

2. The “critique” comment: ” Have others told you they have  problems with reading your blog, because the “text is running off the page???”

3. Many times THE SAME Site owner who told me they had a problem with text running off the page, would write another spam comment, telling me how “WELL” they could read the post and contradicting their previous statement.

4. The “I  clicked the notify button, and now I receive everyone’s comments, how do I stop it?” Well… there is NO “notify” button:)  so in your dream, click unfollow.

5. The worst kind are the sexual spam comments, the penis enlargement, Russian brides, wives who could be your next door neighbors ready to have discrete sex for a fee.

How do I know? Because I  TRY to click on each side from which a comment comes, to make sure the site is legitimate and it does not promote articles which are not in line with certain values I try to promote. Not that I have anything against large penises, but I will not promote them on my site. Sorry guys.

Some quick ways to scan spam:

Look if the comment comes in response to one of your MOST popular posts, but the comment has nothing to do with the topic. For instance, one of my posts has over 800 comments. It was a scheme I shared a while ago and which “touched” many. As a result many genuinely shared THEIR experiences, but that “triggered” the computerized spam machines too…

Determine if the comment is simply an advertisement for a product and again, it has NO connection to the topic of your post.

If someone comments “I LOVE the video,” on your site, and you did not post a video, that is a problem:)

Then, there are the spam comments asking you how to get rid of spam.

Oh well…I guess, read this post:)

In conclusion, spam, hacking, porn sites, are the down side of an active internet presence. If we don’t want the down side, there is the choice of not having profiles on various networks, or to  do what I’m attempting to do now, which is notice the funny side of the annoying while learning to  limit and deal with it.