LJ spam

[cellio]

In the last month or so I've seen a large increase in the number of spam comments I get. (That's why I had to set anonymous comments to be screened, though it delays some legitimate comments.) I understand that this has been happening all over LJ. What puzzles me is why a majority of my spam comments have targeted this short, older entry on an obscure topic -- but an entry that is not so complete or keyword-laden to be clearly the definitive web page on the topic or anything like that. I mean, what search produces that page as a top candidate, and why would spammers selling dating services and shoes and Viagra care about those search terms? I just don't get it; what's so special about that one among my 3000+ journal entries?

Comments

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I've been getting a lot of spam comments as well, though I haven't noticed a focus on a particular topic.

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

I think all the online forums where public posting is enabled has been hit with these types of campaigns. I'm pretty sure all the old D'land addresses have been compromised. I set my comments settings to screen out anonymous comments, so it reduces the chances I'll get annoyed by these things.

[loxian.livejournal.com]

No idea, but (off topic) that's a really interesting entry.

[cellio]

Thanks! Oh, and hi and welcome to my journal. :-)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've been getting a lot of spam lately (though not in the past few days) on a couple of old posts.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Likewise, I have a couple of older posts which - for no obvious reason - seem to be spam magnets.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

My assumption when I got hit by this was that the goal wasn't to get traffic through search engines, but that this was a way to use the LJ notification email as a vector past spam filters to send me emails. (And it's probably related to the fact that LJ notification emails have apparently gotten blacklisted.)

By targeting older messages, they make the spamming less obvious to people who are actively reading the various blog comment threads, which makes it less likely that anyone will do anything about it.

That's why, once I'd had enough, I didn't just start screening anonymous comments, I disabled them. Screening wouldn't benefit my friends, because they're not seeing the spam anyway, and it wouldn't benefit me, because I'd still be getting the emails and have to go in and clean up.

[cellio]

I wondered if spam comments were related to LJ getting blacklisted in some places. (I still seem to be getting my notifications -- otherwise I wouldn't notice the spam comments.)

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I've been having the same experiences. I added a screening requirement to anonymous comments (didn't want to disable entirely) and selectively disabled them on the post that was being targeted. (On that one, I disabled comments entirely since much of the spam there was from actual accounts.)

[cellio]

Oh, I hadn't thought to disable them on just that post! Thanks!

So far I've only gotten one spam comment from an LJ account. The account was gone the next day.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

I've also been getting these, similarly on a handful of old topics.

One was actually from an LJ user rather than anonymous, so it didn't get screened.

[cellio]

Yeah, that's happened to me once too. I would have thought that the account-creation process was onerous enough that spammers wouldn't bother, but I guess a few will.

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

Spam levels are up for me as well, and sometimes from named users rather than anonymous. Too bad actual content is not also trending up. I may just disable the anon comments as legitimate ones have historically been pretty rare.

[cellio]

So far I'm willing to go to the small effort of unscreening the legitimate "anonymous" comments (mine are usually signed, but posted sans LJ account) because I'd like to have the opportunity for the comment/discussion. I guess I could just ignore the spam comments (no one else will see them), but I delete them and report them as spam in case that helps implicate troublesome IP addresses.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

The ways of spammers are bizarre. I personally have not seen any increase (in fact have not seen any for months), but a few times a year my journal or my food journal get a spam, and it is either keyword-based or in some other language. Somehow I am on the grid but mostly off it. My DST and other rants must scare spambots away.