Junk comments becoming a swelling tide....

[mechtild]

SPAM comments.

Since the winter, maybe as early as the fall, I've been receiving comments in old posts that turn out to be junk. Mostly they're anonymous. But sometimes they're from registered LJ users. However, if you go to the user's profile page, you can see they don't really have a journal -- they have no posts and no personal info.

Comments

[jan_u_wine]

yes....let's kill them....kill them all...and then the LJ will be oursssssss......

seriously, how annoying. I think your response is a good one. It may cut down a bit on posters who are anon, but it sounds as if there is far more spam coming in to your LJ than legit anon posters. It's a fair thing, I think.

[mechtild]

Thank you, Jan. Nice Setzer icon, too. :)

[jan_u_wine]

Brian, singing "A Nightingale Sang in Berkely Square" though Bobby's mic. What could be better? Ah.........

I see that Primula actually has some real and good advice. Yay!

[mechtild]

Yes, she is a font of useful advice!!! :)

[primula_baggins]

They are bots that set up fake journals, and then they friend people's journals. As you said, they are always in a foreign language and have no posts of their own (sometimes they *do* have a post or two, even). LJ wants you to report them. These bots are what is causing the LJ notifications problems because they send out thousands of spam messages, and that is what has caused various email hosts to block all of LJ's emails

[mechtild]

Thank you, Primula. I actually have been doing just that: going to each strange comment that crops up (however tiresome it is), deciding if it is spam (always has been so far), then deleting them as spam, as you described.

I don't know how to judge if something is a bot. Do you mean checking the user page to see if there's nothing there and reporting it? Yet there are people friended to Mechtild that have never posted in their own journals, who just have an LJ so they can read other people's posts and comment there. I am glad to hear LJ folk try to check, first, before pouncing on some journal that, for all intents and purposes, looks like a bot journal (but isn't).

But you inspire me to go through the list of LJ's that are friended to Mechtild and see if there are ones that have no personal info, but also that have never commented.

Thanks so much for these instructions!

[primula_baggins]

If you don't know if it's a bot, but there is nothing in the journal, report it as a bot. The LJ peeps will make sure it's a bot before they delete it.

If you know for sure that it's a real person who is generally interested in reading your journal, don't report it.

Sorry to say, the way things with LJ spam bots these days, it's far more important to be safe than sorry. And if people only want their journal to be able to comment, they can at least post ONE ENTRY explaining that, right?

[mechtild]

Thanks, Primula. That's clearer still. You've been a real help. :)

[mariole]

Yes, I get this crap. I just delete it. But it's a pain, because I have to look it up and make sure it's complete garbage. If it contains a link, I know it's one of those scam things as well.

I hate this.

[mariole]

Adding, CAPCha however you spell it sounds like an option I'll use as well. I don't want to contribute to the tide.

And the option to delete a comment is now reduced to only delete-- there was no "mark as spam" the last few times I did it. Maybe they got too many requests?

[mechtild]

I have never not been able to use "delete as spam". That must have been a glitch, Mariole.

The CAPTCHA's are not perfect. I got another anonymous ad/spam comment just today, and the CAPTCHA function is in place. But it has reduced the anonymous spam comments tremendously. Now I need to select "show CAPTCHAs to non-friends", since I am still getting a lot of junk comments from LJ users likely to be bots.

[mariole]

> That must have been a glitch, Mariole.

You're right; it went away for a few days, and now it's back.

I hope they can't get around the CAPTCHA; those things are such a pain, I hope they actually work! Such a bummer about non-friends; most of my comments are probably that, or half, anyway, since I don't really friend much beyond the LOTR community. But I get about 1 spam per day; it sounds like you get much more.

[lily_the_hobbit]

I've been lucky. I only had a a handful of these - all from registered users which I immediately deleted and marked as spam. I hope the situation improves for you now.

[mechtild]

Thanks, Lily. I hope it will not come to showing every commenter CAPTCHA's. As I just found out, it's not possible to select both "anonymous" and "non-friends" as those to whom they will be shown. You have to choose one or the other. Since I have got more from anonymous than registered LJ users, I'll leave it set to anonymous for the time being.

[mechtild]

Thanks, Mews. Yes, it seems to be rampant. I've only twice had a mystery comment from what seemed to be, definitely, a bot journal. I did what I should to get rid of them. But this new influx is unprecedented, and mostly from anonymous spammers. The CAPTCHA for anonymous comments has reduced them, I'm happy to say. But I was just telling Lily, I got another anonymous spammer just today, who had to have jumped the CAPTCHA hoop.