After it seemed that the comment spam problem was somehow getting under control (I don't have hard figures on that, but most blogs I visit seem to have good enough anti-spam techniques in place), we have now context-sensitive spam comments... An example which was made to my last post:

So now what? Have you bought the Eye TV or are you still planning for that? Otherwise thnx for the information as I was just palnning to either upgrade my system or Looking in to buy a TV.

Keep up the good work!!

Ok, "keep up the good work" was very suspicious, and the link to some hormone website on the URL field made it pretty clear. But apart from that? It's totally related to the post, he even asks me a related question, so that I may feel obliged to answer and it doesn't have dozens of links included, etc..

This was obviously a manual job, therefore none of the anti-spam techniques (except URL blacklisting) helps here. I am maybe getting 3-4 such comments in a week, so deleting them is, thanks to our one-click-deletion links, not much work. But if that increases, it could get really annoying, especially because you can't detect them as spam on the first spot. OTOH, all those comments are so meaningless, even if they weren't spam and are somehow context-related, I don't have a problem deleting them. If you have nothing new to say, just don't comment :)

Maybe akismet is faster/better in detecting those comments ('cause of more widespread URL blacklisting collection or sth. similar), should check it some day.

PS: We don't have a spam problem in general, our system catches maybe 99.5% of all spam comments (without using captchas, btw), it's just those manual spam comments which are worrying me a little :)

Update: Shame on me :) The comment form didn't work, 'cause I black-listed this comment itself out... (spam.com was blacklisted, which matched on spam-comments in the url). Great. I improved now my regexes and will also improve the referrer-black-lister itself. Sorry for all those who wanted to comment.

Update II: Implemented akismet into Flux CMS and already it already caught the first hand crafted spam comment. cool stuff :)

Philipp Keller @ 30.06.2006 13:25 CEST
Are you sure this is done manually?


Probably someone searches blog post by eyetv and then adds this one comment to every blog post about eyetv?

Could you give other samples of such comments? Sounds very interesting.

BTW: My comments regularly are blocked. Maybe I post from a blacklisted IP?

chregu @ 30.06.2006 14:03 CEST
I'll post more exampes, when they come in :)

About blocking you: What error message do you get then? As I said in the Update to this post, we had a problem with this post and the referrer black list, but that should be solved now. Do you had problems with other posts as well, or just with this one?

Your IP is not blocked, btw

chregu @ 30.06.2006 14:05 CEST
Ah found an example. Came in yesterday for this post here (...)

***
I fully support you. spammers hereby indiacte, those are not welcomed who try to advertise themselves, their sites or the products they are affiliated with. Their comment is spammed and not tolerated. So better be careful..........
***

Philipp Keller @ 30.06.2006 14:10 CEST
Thanks, I didn't read the update, sorry.

The spam-comments seem to be smarter than the past ones but I doubt they are hand-crafted. Seems that spammers got smarter programs with some natural language rules built in.

chregu @ 30.06.2006 14:20 CEST
More examples:

For http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/2004/12/03/bxe-1-0-0-released.html :

***
It is perfect. Thank you. Now I am downloading BXE.
***

For http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/2006/06/22/italy-won.html :

***
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ! Go Italy go !
***
and
***
Finally Italy has won! No I know it's not the FIFA Football Cup but we all will see Italy playing in finals!!

All my wishes are there with Italy :)

Three cheers for Italy
hip hip hurray :)
***
For http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/2006/02/14/classifieds-via-blogs.html :

***
will the agreegation of classifieds add work with RSS Feeds
***

For http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/2006/05/13/zurich-beats-basel.html :

***
Great! Congrats for the unexpected victory!
ENJJJJJJJJJJJJJJOY!
***

For http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/2006/05/16/webtuesday-impressions.html :

***
Plz update with the discussion.........
***

For http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/2006/05/29/stadio-rossi.html :

***
WOOOOOOW ! It would be fun! I wish i could be a live spectator.
***

Etc etc... Can't imagine, they are auto-generated and also can't imagine, they "cracked" our anti-spam measurement... Or wrote a spam-poster extra for flux cms

Philipp Keller @ 30.06.2006 14:29 CEST
Ok ok!
Hast mich überzeugt! :-)

Aaron @ 30.06.2006 21:48 CEST
So if someone makes an on-topic comment why delete it just because of the URL they add?

Why have comments at all? Why have a URL field?

chregu @ 01.07.2006 13:14 CEST
Aaron: Well, the URLs they provide says it all. Here's a little collection

a d u l t l e a r n s . c o m
s e l e c t a h o s t i n g . c o m
u r m a t t r e s s . c o m
a b o u t - d i s a b i l i t y . c o m
k a k a . b l o g y a . d e / k a k a /

If that's not just spam, then I don't know :)

And second, the comments have sooo nothing to add to the discussion :)

I welcome everyone leaving his URL here, who makes some real contributions to my posts or has honest questions or whatever.

James Thompson @ 06.07.2006 09:53 CEST
I think that till the time a spammer has said something relevant to your post and left an URL till that point in time it's okay. Anyways he is not harming you. Most of the times you will find comment related to your posts only. What you will do in that case?

[Edit by chregu: Deleted the URL to "James" Spam Blog, which has the same layout as all the others mentioned above...)

Alain @ 07.07.2006 01:31 CEST
Are they hiring desperate housewifes to do this? ;)

Richard Willy @ 07.07.2006 13:36 CEST
I don't think that they are hiring desperate husewives for that. All together they are also human being and might just be doing so that they can know what all people can think about spammers. Might just they are doing in as some experiment!

[Edited by chregu: Another one with a link to a "spam" site. removed...]

Robby Thompson @ 12.07.2006 12:58 CEST
Well I can see that you have been deleting the links to some of the postings.

[Edited by chregu: Clever guy and your link is also gone ;) ]