Comment Spam

In the beginning was the Spam, and the Spam was with the email, and the Spam was the email. All things were made of Spam, and without Spam was not any email made. And the Spam shone in the Internet, and the Internet comprehended it not.

And the marketers said “Let there be Comment Spam,” and there was. The marketers saw that the Comment Spam was good, and they separated the Comment Spam from the email Spam.

Then the marketers said “Let there be bots to create Comment Spam,” and it was so. But in the Garden of Internet, the holy Akismet saw the Comment Spam and, looking upon it, named it Evil. Akismet did fight and slay the bots, marking the Comment Spam for moderation on all the blogs of the Garden of Internet.

And the marketers were filled with great woe, for no longer did their HREFs create links on the blogs in the Garden; and their Comment Spam was thrown down from the blog places and was cast upon the memory stack, where it remained until deleted.

Then did the marketers ponder long and hard, that they might once again raise Comment Spam on the blog places of the Garden. “Did Akismet analyse our bots?” they asked. “Did it understand that the meaningless drivel was Spam?”

And so the marketers sought slaves, that they might pay little and once again create Comment Spam. And it was so. And the slaves went forth from the freelancing places of the Garden of Internet and created new Comment Spam, giving it the form of normal speech. Into this devious endeavour they poured many hours of labour. And the marketers saw that it was good.

Then did Akismet respond once again. For it was reborn in a new release and carried with it the knowledge of the marketers’ ways. Akismet went forth from the House of Development, into the Garden of Internet, and the marketers were once again thrown down. Their slaves were confounded and the Comment Spam left unapproved. And there was much gnashing of teeth in the marketers’ dwellings at the news of Akismet’s victory.

And yet the marketers sought new ways to avoid their enemy and sought hidden ways through Akismet’s defences. “Let there be copied comments,” they said. And it was so. And the many blog places of the Garden of Internet were once again assailed by Comment Spam.

Akismet was not confused by this new weapon and marked the copies for moderation, but the marketers’ slaves had been clever. For they had duplicated the name of the owners of the blog places and copied their comments, only changing the URL of the owner’s address. And so many blog places in the Garden of Internet were once again infected with Comment Spam.

And the marketers did rejoice; they opened many cases of Web 2.0 and rejoiced late into the night. And there was much wailing and despair in the blog places of the Garden of Internet.

Yes, readers, there’s a new form of comment spam: after the bot-created spam and human-created spam (for details of the latter, Samar has a wonderful post here), we now have copy/paste spam. This just happened to me.

The spammer copies a reply by the blog owner, entering their name the same (spikethelobster on this blog) and pasting in exactly the same text as has already been posted. They simply change the site URL. Although Akismet may spot the comment, it’s unlikely – I caught mine simply because everyone’s first comment here is moderated.

Even then, I almost approved it, because I assumed it was one of my own comments that had somehow been trapped in WordPress by a bug. Not the case: username the same, comment the same, different URL – to the spammer’s site.

Very sneaky. Keep an eye open for it.