In general, I consider anything that's mis-spelled and random in the comments to be spam - we get a lot of them when we post about celebrity baby news on Blogging Baby. 'Britney is greatest singer EVER! and i luv her!' etc. Ampersand wrote in to tell us about a similar problem, part of what may be a new form of comment spam. One of his readers commented, "I dont even remember how i reached your site but it doesnt matter, cause i'm so happy i found it, it really made me think, keep up the good work." Just makes you all warm and fuzzy inside, right?
Well, not so much. Ampersand theorizes that the spammers (who left dozens of comments like this) are trying to set themselves up for future link-heavy comments. Evidently, the WordPress 1.5 system asks a blogger to approve the first comment left by an anonymous user; all future comments from the same person are considered safe and are posted without approval. He believes that these spammers' "goal is to get me to approve a few of these anonymous, adoring comments; and then in a month or two hit me with hundreds of Texas hold'em spam or whatever."
Sounds insidious, and likely. Has anyone else had this experience?
1. Such 'thanks' comments being a method of setting spammers for future approval isn't a problem if you're (and, to be honest, you should be) using a decent anti-spam plugin.
Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Steve