Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Spam

I just have to tell someone.

It's driving me crazy. The spam is driving me crazy. I screen my comments, meaning they come to me from Blogger as email. It gives me the chance to read comments before posting them.

This used to be a simple thing to do, took very little time. But now it seems that for every genuine comment, there are five that qualify as pure comment spam.

Comment spam is generally machine generated from an Anonymous individual. This entrepreneur wants me to direct you to links, places you probably don't want to go. They're not the kind of places you would find on my sidebar. Do you really want to visit websites for shady pharmaceuticals, diet drugs, and porn? Doubt it.

The content of the comment can be so disgusting it literally makes me sick just scanning it to screen it.

My experience is probably akin to what one of my kids experienced at the tender age of nine. He opened an email with a naked little girl captioned, Got milk? Disturbing to some of us.

So I'm becoming loathe to open comments from people who go by the name, Anonymous. Especially since they're anything but anonymous.

Thus:

If you can. Try to work with the other options for signing comments so they're less likely to be deleted due to my not irrational aversion, my allergy to comment spam.

Instead of choosing Anonymous, pick the option: Name/URL. Choose a name for yourself, and and fill in the box with your new moniker. We all need to reinvent ourselves once in awhile, and everyone needs an alias. This is your chance.

You don't have to put down a URL. There are too many in the universe already.

Then tell me everything. Or whatever it was you wanted to say.

Much obliged,

therapydoc

13 comments:

TAAAF said...

Have you talked to Blogger about it? They might be able to help you - they are always insisting that they hate spam as much as we do...

CiCi said...

Just as in real life, some people try to take away from others. In this online blogging life, people try to take my peace with their spam. I won't let them.

Glimmer said...

I understand. And I am guilty of having been "Anonymous" lately due to laziness. I changed from a PC to a laptop and since my commenting does not immediately pop up as "me" I would click on spam. I'm a real tech genuis here. I struggle, obviously. So Anonymous was the easy way out.

But I will stop being lazy. Because I write gardening posts for a website and the spammers have breached the gates. So now I have to go over there regularly and delete their many comments on my posts, selling pharmaceuticals, mostly, insurance, etc. You have to write in the answer to a question to be able to post a comment there, but someone does and then they flood the comment section. Nice, very nice.

Syd said...

I too dislike the spam and Blogger now catches most of it...Thankfully.

Hannah @A Mother in Israel said...

Blogger is bragging about some new kind of spam control, hopefully it will help you.

therapydoc said...

Thanks all. Nice to see I'm in good company. I think since they started "blocking" spam, it got worse.

Jew Wishes said...

I empathize completely! I hate spam, and the subject line of most of the spam I receive is disgusting in itself.

Grrrrrrrrr.

Mound Builder said...

Okay, I can certainly understand your aversion to Anonymous, which I have been using when I've left comments. So I've made up a name for myself.

therapydoc said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you Mound Builder.

And I just want to tell all of you, that since I posted it? I've only had two pieces of spam. So maybe they're listening.

onelongjourney said...

So does anyone else get the comments that are in chinese? I get a lot of these and at first I thought it was from a real person. But everytime I tried to determine the sender -it was a site that was just started. Is the only way to shop this is to screen each comment?

Tag said...

yup I also used to use Anon but no more

porcini66 said...

Makes it more of a community, anyway. I like seeing people's screen names! :)

Anonymous said...

I'm paranoid. Non tech savy and have started blogs and been unable to access them to ever write in them again.
I've got some head problems and hide behind anonymous so no one will really know what a mess I am.
Sometimes the only communication I have for months at a time are commenting on blogs other than talking to myself, partner and dogs. That sounds so pathetic.

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