#338. What is Spam Protection? How does it work?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faq/338.html
The Spam Protection setting can be activated to help automatically identify potential spam comments and messages. Comments marked as spam will be placed in the separate category which cannot be reached by ordinary visitors of your journal or community. Spam messages will be moved to a special folder in your Inbox. Enabling Spam Protection activates this system both for comments in your journal/community and your private messages, indentifying spam and allowing you to take actions. If the Spam Protection setting is enabled, notifications about most suspicious comments and personal messages will not be sent.
There is a variety of criteria that helps to identify a comment as spam, such as suspicious links, journal owner friends' reaction, and other statistical parameters. There are certains cases, however, when a comment is not checked.
If there are suspisious comments left to an entry, you can view them by adding ?mode=showspam to the entry's address. (If there already is a "?" sign in the address, add &mode=showspam instead). Moreover, near the number of comments link another link will appear. This one will lead to the comments page and will show the number of comments left to the entry. The suspicious comments page is available for an entry's author both in personal journals and in community. These comments can also be seen by the community administration - its owner, maintainers и moderators).
Though other users cannot see suspicious comments next to the regular ones, an author of such comment will still be able to see it at the same page with other comments. The suspicious comment's author can delete it, if it was not sent anonymously.
Spam Protection is enabled by default for all journals and communities. If you wish to manage spam yourself, you can disable the Protection in the Account Settings.In this case all comments, regardless of their contents, will be shown on the same page. No matter whether the Protection is enabled or not, you can still mark comments as spam. If you had received suspicious comments before you disabled Spam Protection system, these comments will remain available on the "Suspicious comments" page for you to view and manage them.
What can I do with a suspicious comment?
The "Suspicious comments" page looks almost like the regular comment page, but the difference is that you can take additional actions to suspicious comments. In communities, your ability to take actions regarding suspicious comments depends on your place in the community management. Every action regarding regular and spam comments taken by users makes an impact to Spam Protection system learning, so by managing comments you make a contribution to its development.
Who is able to see all the suspicious comments and manage them:
I have enabled the Protection, but there is still spam in the comments!
Unfortunately, the Spam Protection system is not perfect, but every user can make it better by marking regular comments as spam.If you have noticed a spam comment among the others, please do this. No matter whether the Spam Protection is enabled or not, there is a button "Mark as spam" next to every comment (except for the ones from moderators, maintainers and owners of a community). Below there is a list of who can see this button and what can they do:
The same buttons are available at Private messages notification system and can be used for the very same actions.
My comments are mistakenly marked as spam! What should I do?
If your comment is marked as spam while it is not one, and you want other users to see it, you should contact the users who have access to the suspicious comments page and ask them to check your comment. Nobody except them would be able to see your comment and help you.
If there is no reaction to your request, try deleting your comment, editing it and posting again. If there was a link to another website in your comment, try deleting it: chances are the Spam Protection system is reacting to this link.
You might also want to learn under what conditions the comments are not checked and marked as spam.
Under what conditions the Spam Protection system will not check my comment for spam?
The cases in which the Spam Protection system will not check the comments for spam are listed below:
Spam protection for messages
When Spam Protection is activated, private messages from users who have been identified as potential spammers are marked as spam and moved to a special folder in your Inbox. As with comments, you can review these messages at any time to either delete them or mark them as not spam.
Further reading
The Spam Protection setting can be activated to help automatically identify potential spam comments and messages. Comments marked as spam will be placed in the separate category which cannot be reached by ordinary visitors of your journal or community. Spam messages will be moved to a special folder in your Inbox. Enabling Spam Protection activates this system both for comments in your journal/community and your private messages, indentifying spam and allowing you to take actions. If the Spam Protection setting is enabled, notifications about most suspicious comments and personal messages will not be sent.
There is a variety of criteria that helps to identify a comment as spam, such as suspicious links, journal owner friends' reaction, and other statistical parameters. There are certains cases, however, when a comment is not checked.
If there are suspisious comments left to an entry, you can view them by adding ?mode=showspam to the entry's address. (If there already is a "?" sign in the address, add &mode=showspam instead). Moreover, near the number of comments link another link will appear. This one will lead to the comments page and will show the number of comments left to the entry. The suspicious comments page is available for an entry's author both in personal journals and in community. These comments can also be seen by the community administration - its owner, maintainers и moderators).
Though other users cannot see suspicious comments next to the regular ones, an author of such comment will still be able to see it at the same page with other comments. The suspicious comment's author can delete it, if it was not sent anonymously.
Spam Protection is enabled by default for all journals and communities. If you wish to manage spam yourself, you can disable the Protection in the Account Settings.In this case all comments, regardless of their contents, will be shown on the same page. No matter whether the Protection is enabled or not, you can still mark comments as spam. If you had received suspicious comments before you disabled Spam Protection system, these comments will remain available on the "Suspicious comments" page for you to view and manage them.
What can I do with a suspicious comment?
The "Suspicious comments" page looks almost like the regular comment page, but the difference is that you can take additional actions to suspicious comments. In communities, your ability to take actions regarding suspicious comments depends on your place in the community management. Every action regarding regular and spam comments taken by users makes an impact to Spam Protection system learning, so by managing comments you make a contribution to its development.
Who is able to see all the suspicious comments and manage them:
- In personal journal:
- an entry's author:
- - delete all comments from this user and block him;
- - unmark this comment and move it to regular comments;
- In community:
- an entry's author:
- - delete commnent;
- - unmark this comment and move it to regular comments;
- community's owner or maintainer:
- - delete all comments from this user in this community and block him;
- - unmark this comment and move it to regular comments;
- community's moderator:
- - unmark this comment and move it to regular comments.
I have enabled the Protection, but there is still spam in the comments!
Unfortunately, the Spam Protection system is not perfect, but every user can make it better by marking regular comments as spam.If you have noticed a spam comment among the others, please do this. No matter whether the Spam Protection is enabled or not, there is a button "Mark as spam" next to every comment (except for the ones from moderators, maintainers and owners of a community). Below there is a list of who can see this button and what can they do:
- In personal journal:
- journal's owner:
- - mark the comment as spam, block its author and delete all his comments in the entire journal;
- In community:
- an entry's author:
- - mark as spam and delete all this user's comments to this entry;
- community's owner or maintainer:
- - mark as spam and delete all this user's comments in the entire community.
The same buttons are available at Private messages notification system and can be used for the very same actions.
My comments are mistakenly marked as spam! What should I do?
If your comment is marked as spam while it is not one, and you want other users to see it, you should contact the users who have access to the suspicious comments page and ask them to check your comment. Nobody except them would be able to see your comment and help you.
If there is no reaction to your request, try deleting your comment, editing it and posting again. If there was a link to another website in your comment, try deleting it: chances are the Spam Protection system is reacting to this link.
You might also want to learn under what conditions the comments are not checked and marked as spam.
Under what conditions the Spam Protection system will not check my comment for spam?
The cases in which the Spam Protection system will not check the comments for spam are listed below:
- In personal journal, if:
- the comment is posted by the journal's owner;
- the comment is posted by the journal's owner friend;
- In community, if:
- the comment is posted by the community member (except for communities with free membership);
- the comment is posted by the community's owner ;
- the comment is posted by the community's maintainer;
- the comment is posted by the community's moderator;
- the comment is posted by the Paid or Permanent account owner;
- the comment is posted by the member of notaspammer community.
Spam protection for messages
When Spam Protection is activated, private messages from users who have been identified as potential spammers are marked as spam and moved to a special folder in your Inbox. As with comments, you can review these messages at any time to either delete them or mark them as not spam.
Further reading