When I logged into WordPress a few minutes ago I noticed that I had 81 comments awaiting moderation. All of them were spam.

Now, I logged in yesterday to a post and that was the last time I logged in. So it’s been a whole day. 24 hours, give or take. That is the highest number of spam comments that I’ve received in a single day, and I delete all spam comments every day. Almost all of the comments were by insurance companies and gambling websites. Those are the biggest perpetrators. The biggest surprise of the day? No spam from Viagra companies or their most famous representative, Bob Dole.

Some of the spammers try to operate under real names, which are aliases. You know, like Aron, Hero, and Halo. Very common names. Their last names are probably Smith.

Spam is annoying. We all know that. But it’s even more annoying when you have to spend five minutes of your time deleting the messages you know you’ll never approve. I’ve got spam protection, but Akismet doesn’t catch everything. If I didn’t have my moderator settings set to only show comments approved by me then all of my visitors would see my spam. In other words, my underwear would be showing. Good thing I wore a belt.

P.S. Since I’ve written this post I’ve received one new comment. Want to bet it’s spam?

P.P.S. I win. From Aron again.

Aron
http://nicyheteti.ibnsites.com/emmitt-till/ | neo@hotmail.com | 92.48.127.97

Thanks, Aron.

Hey, this is happening with our new PHP form too. It’s so annoying, I wish I could send a bomb back to their IP location. Did you ever resolve the issue and stop the spam? Search that email on the web, it’s everywhere!

Ryan, it’s almost impossible to stop spam. I’ve got measures in place to catch it and I get it all before it goes live. But I still get spam on a daily basis - and I still delete it as soon as I find it.