{"id":6216,"date":"2016-03-28T18:08:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T18:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saeler.com\/?p=6216"},"modified":"2022-10-15T15:34:05","modified_gmt":"2022-10-15T15:34:05","slug":"spam-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wordpress-functionality\/spam-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"How to tell when you get a spam comment in WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Spam comments are just part of life when using WordPress, but it&#8217;s not all that difficult to distinguish between spam and&nbsp;real comments. &nbsp;In most casses spam comments are automated and follow a basic pattern:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Generically compliment the WordPress site even if the comment isn&#8217;t relevant to the post<\/li><li>Appear to be a legitimate comment, but list a spam, phishing or commision site as their URL<\/li><li>Email addresses use free services or&nbsp;international&nbsp;domain names<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Meeting one of the above criteria doesn&#8217;t mean the comment is spam, but generally speaking when it meets two or more you have a spammer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Now some examples of how to distinguish comments from spam:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the following email notification of a WordPress Comment, we can see an attempt to appear legitimate. But, if you look closely, &nbsp;there are a few&nbsp;telltale signs that it&#8217;s not. &#8220;I was suggested this site&#8221; is a common type of phrase used by spammers, which combined with &#8220;not sure whether this post is written him&#8221; implies a familiarity with the site. However, if you look at the author, email and url a different story emerges.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A search on the author, which is not actually a name but a marketing slogan, will allow you to translate from Indonesian to English. Add to that an email address on a free provider (AOL, Yahoo and Gmail are common favorites among spammers) and a fake website address (appears to link to a YouTube video) look closely at the URL and its &#8220;youtu.be&#8221; not &#8220;youtube.com&#8221; and you clearly have as spam comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"368\" src=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spamcomments.jpg\" alt=\"Sample WordPress Spam Comment\" class=\"wp-image-10609\" srcset=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spamcomments.jpg 800w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spamcomments-300x138.jpg 300w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spamcomments-768x353.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In another example (seen from the &#8220;WordPress Comments Admin&#8221;), we can see the complement, author name is a marketing phrase and another free email address &#8211; but this time the spammer appears to be targeting posts with keywords similar to their spam marketing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"76\" src=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spam-comment-c.jpg\" alt=\"Sample WordPress Spam Comment\" class=\"wp-image-10610\" srcset=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spam-comment-c.jpg 800w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spam-comment-c-300x29.jpg 300w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spam-comment-c-768x73.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Holding the mouse over their listed URL will provide a preview of a spam sales page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"211\" src=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spam-comment-d.jpg\" alt=\"Sample WordPress Spam Comment\" class=\"wp-image-10611\" srcset=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spam-comment-d.jpg 800w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spam-comment-d-300x79.jpg 300w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/spam-comment-d-768x203.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally another example, but with what appears to be an actual author name not using a free email. In this example, the comment appears to be meaningless in relation to the post and at the same time relevant to the keywords. What&#8217;s a little trickier here is that the website appears to be legitimate, however the company is based in the United States &#8211; specifically Sacramento, Ca. &nbsp;(says so on their website) and the email address is from a German domain (.de).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"74\" src=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment-b.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10612\" srcset=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment-b.jpg 800w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment-b-300x28.jpg 300w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment-b-768x71.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Holding the mouse over their listed URL will provide a preview of a sales page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10613\" srcset=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment.jpg 800w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment-300x95.jpg 300w, https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment-768x243.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In summary, when it comes to determining if a comment is spam or not look at the message but don&#8217;t forget the other details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spam comments are just part of life when using WordPress, but it&#8217;s not all that difficult to distinguish between spam and&nbsp;real comments. &nbsp;In most casses spam comments are automated and follow a basic pattern: Generically compliment the WordPress site even if the comment isn&#8217;t relevant to the post Appear to be a legitimate comment, but\u2026&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wordpress-functionality\/spam-comments\/\" class=\"rmlink\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":5,"wds_primary_category":87,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[159],"class_list":{"0":"post-6216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wordpress-functionality","8":"tag-comment-spam","9":"entry"},"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment-600x253.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/spam-comment-600x253.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Jack Alltrade","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/author\/jacka11trade\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6216"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10620,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216\/revisions\/10620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}