Over the past couple of weeks, I have been receiving 7-9 pages of Spam comments daily, and at least 5 pages of Trash, or more. I have done my best to sift through all the nonsense in the hope of finding genuine comments, and managed to retrieve at least 10 this week.
But I no longer have the time or the inclination to do this, so I am apologising in advance for any of your comments that do not appear.
From today, I will be applying ‘Bulk Delete’ on all of it.
Reading through the Spam and Trash folders today to check for genuine comments, something occurred to me.
Spam links could actually be very useful, but only…
*If I lived in America and needed to get my Sprinter repaired.
*If I lived in Orange County (which is in California, apparently) and needed spares for my RV.
*If I owned an RV and needed it to be serviced.
*If I had a forklift truck in need of repair.
*If I wanted to learn how to operate a forklift truck.
*If I wanted to contact willing girls in the Far East.
*If I wanted to stream live pornography for a bargain price.
*If I wanted someone to completely upgrade my website and attract more site traffic.
*If I needed some form of tablet that would act as a sexual stimulant.
*If I wanted to get my website onto the top three of every Google Search.
*If I needed a replacement windscreen for my delivery truck.
*If I lived in Auckland (New Zealand) and wanted to buy a bargain price SUV.
*If I wanted to invest in a new ‘Condo’ in Florida.
Unfortunately, none of those apply to me.
WordPress continues to sneak genuine comments into both of these folders, for no apparent reason.
After searching through ten pages of comments this evening, I found three genuine comments from trusted followers.
So my tip for today is that it might be worth you taking time to check yours.
It is only Thursday, and so far this week I have had to recover 17 genuine comments from either the Spam or Trash folders.
None of these comments contained any ‘banned words’, and none had any links, suspicious or otherwise. It appears that WP is dumping some comments randomly again, so you may all want to check these folders before deleting them in bulk.
Following my recent ‘Spamalanche’, (Spam+Avalanche) I went back into my settings and reviewed my ‘Disallowed Comment Keys’, as recommended by some blogging friends.
This is a fancy name for words you don’t allow in comments, email addresses and urls associated with spammers, or just anything you recognise as being consistent with hundreds of Spam comments every day.
For example, this is my current list of disallowed words, numbers, and terms.
(You can find yours by looking at your most frequent Spam comments, without clicking on them.)
91.211.98.0
91.211.96.0
91.211.88.127
hydroxychloroquine
chloroquine
Muchas gracias
Porn
CBD
Escortcl.com
Hairstyles
Morovicracks.com
slkjdf.net
Vapor
Hairdressing
Vape
Праздники
bitcoin
casino
slkjfdf.net
slkfdf.net
cialis
escort
escortzen
As you can see, it is a mixed bag, and all of this was generating something like 2,000 Spam comments every week. This meant I missed genuine comments, as I had no time to find them in all that junk
Almost overnight, I went from 300 Spam comments a day, down to 5-10 a day.
My Trash folder went from next to nothing in it, to a current total of 1,963 ‘disallowed’ comments.
I no longer have to worry about missing good comments, at least as long as someone doesn’t use any of those words or terms.
If you want to try this, it’s easy.
Settings > Discussion Settings > Disallowed Comment Keys
Type in anything you want to be disallowed, then remember to scroll down and SAVE CHANGES.
You can edit the list anytime you like, saving changes every time you do.
Apologies for missing off the episode of ‘Outside’ yesterday. It will be posted later today.
Sorry to say I am getting between 70-100 Spam comments arriving in my Spam Folder every day at the moment, something of a ‘Spam Avalanche’.
I just don’t have the time to check them individually, so if anyone’s comments are being put in Spam by mistake, I apologise in advance for missing them.
I am just using the ‘Empty Spam’ option, to delete them in bulk.
I have to break my rule of not posting so much to let you know that many comments from regular blogging friends have gone astray.
I was about to empty my Spam and Trash folders earlier, and I was shocked to find 45 genuine comments had been dumped in there by WordPress. I have just had to manually approve and reply to them all. If you left a comment that I did not acknowledge, the chances are it has been trashed and deleted by WordPress, definitely not by me!
Apologies to everyone who kindly left a comment, then must have thought I had completely ignored it. It wasn’t my fault, and seems to be yet another of those random WP glitches that cause me so much annoyance and frustration.
Anyone wondering my my replies have come so late now knows the answer.
My suggestion to you all is to quickly check both Spam and Trash folders.
Comments from your blogging friends may have been dumped there without you knowing.
Since I logged on this morning, WordPress has notified me of 1,000 spam comments already today.
They are all from the same company, offering to sell me a drug called Cialis.
This is what the drug is for.
Tadalafil, sold under the brand name Cialis among others, is a medication used to treat erectile dysfunction, benign prostatic hyperplasia, and pulmonary arterial hypertension. It is a tablet taken by mouth. Onset is typically within half an hour and the duration is up to 36 hours.
1,000 spam messages, all about the same thing!
They are obviously trying to tell me something…
Most days, I get anything from 30-40 Spam comments captured by WordPress and consigned to the Spam Folder. However on Monday, I had an an increase in the number of views on this blog after posting five rather random articles.
In that 24-hour period, I received over 800 views, which was very satisfying.
But on checking my Spam Folder, I found not the usual 30+ comments locked in there, but an unusually high 160!
So I have come to the conclusion that more views generate more Spam.
I have been posting a great deal of fiction during this ‘Virus Year’, as well as regular reports about the effects of Covid-19 in Beetley, and reblogging old posts for all the new followers.
So I thought I would go back to one of my favourite topics today, Blogging.
Regular readers will be clasping hands to foreheads, knowing that they are about to get a recap of my familiar moaning.
I say “Clasp away”, because that is exactly what is going to happen.
Remember when I said I would Spam anyone who left a link to their own blog as a supposed comment? Well it is still happening, and I am very happy to tell you that I have spammed no less than 22 bloggers who ignored my warning. Here it is again, in case you missed it.
A link to your own blog or blog post is NOT a comment, and never will be. If you do that on my blog, you WILL be Spammed!
What about the ‘Followers’ who do the same thing? They follow this blog, then immediately comment on any post by linking to their own.
Same deal! You WILL be Spammed!
Another pet hate. Inappropriate one or two-word comments on post that they obviously haven’t read. Case in point, a post about one person dying from Covid-19, and the terrible effect of that on his family and friends. The comment from some clown? ‘Nice Post’. (With a smiley face)
You guessed it. He was Spammed!
Another one? One of my best friends died of Covid-19 in May. I wrote a very sad post about his death, and how it had affected me.
The comment received? ‘Nice. Please check out my blog’.
Another twit Spammed!
Keep doing it, and I will keep Spamming you. Your choice.
beetleypete 