Comment Spam

What is comment spam?

A spam comment is an unwanted message placed on your site as a comment or TrackBack on a post. ("Spam" is a common internet term for junk messages, much like junk email is called spam mail.)

The comment that is posted can be an innocent message like "nice site!" or it can be an advertising message, and it usually includes a link to another site. The linked site could be a business site, an offensive or pornographic site, or it could also be a normal looking weblog.

Spammers post these messages to boost their rankings in search engines. By leaving the link on your site they have more incoming links to their site and this will make their site show higher in search results. To do this, they write scripts that submit comments to hundreds or even thousands of sites in an automated manner. This tactic works even if neither you nor your site's readers click on the links on the comments.

What is TypePad doing about spam?

Over the past year, we've invested a great deal of time and energy fighting comment and TrackBack spam on TypePad. Most of that investment has been invisible to our customers, and involves a combination of science and art to (a) detect spam attacks, (b) block as much spam as possible from reaching your blog, and (c) retroactively clean up any spam from your blogs after an attack.

And earlier this year TypePad was the first hosted weblogging service to support the nofollow initiative, which helps eliminate one of the key incentives for comment spammers. For more information, see Fighting Comment Spam at Everything TypePad!

How do you recommend I combat comment spam?

There are several things you can do to fight comment spam on multiple levels:

Turn on Comment Authentication with TypeKey. With Comment Authentication, all viewers must be authenticated before posting comments. This stops virtually all scripted and automated comment spamming engines.
Turn on Comment Moderation. This keep spam from being published automatically to your weblog because you must approve all comments before they are published. In other words, you control the conversation.
Ban the commenter's IP address. If you locate the source of unwanted comments or spam, you can block the IP address of the commenter.
Report comment spam to TypePad.
Close comments on older entries. The older the entry, the more comment spam it will collect. It becomes a magnet for comment spam engines and scripts.

How do I remove spam from my site?

TypePad gives you powerful controls for managing reader comments posted to your weblog. The easiest solution is to delete the comment to remove the spam from your account and weblog pages.

Note: To ban the commenter or report the message as spam, select all of the comment details before deleting the comment and copy them so that they can be pasted into your report.

Also see TypePad Help: Deleting Comments on Your Posts

How do I report comment spam?

Use the TypePad Help Ticket system to send your spam report. Select I received a spam comment to my weblog for the category. Include the comment details--you can paste the text from the comment notify email (see "How do I receive notices of new comments" below), or, if you don't have the comment notification, paste the comment with the Name/Email/URL and comment text into your support ticket.

Open a New Help Ticket

How do I ban an IP from commenting?

Use the TypePad Control Panel to ban an IP from commenting on your site. The spammers frequently change IPs with their messages so this is not always helpful but it can help if you are receiving messages from the same IP.

Also see TypePad Help: Banning a Commenter

How do I receive notices of new comments?

The comment options for the weblog are configured in your weblog preference options (Configure > Preferences).

In the Comment and TrackBack Preferences section, select the Notify the author of the post via email when new comments are submitted? check box and save the setting. You will now receive an email notification sent to the email address in your author profile when a new comment is posted on your site.

Also see TypePad Help: Setting Your Weblog Comment Preferences

How do I turn off comments?

You can set your Weblog Comment Preferences so that the Default Comment Status is New posts do not have comments.

Otherwise, comments are set on a per-post basis. Open the Edit Post page for the post. From the drop-down menu, you have three comments options:

Open - Visitors can leave comments on the post and comments will be displayed.
Closed - Visitors can no longer leave comments on the post, but older comments will still be displayed.
None - Comments are not allowed on the post, and older comments (if any) will not be displayed.

Set the comments option to None and save the post.

Also see TypePad Help: Enabling Comments on Your Posts

How can I authenticate commenters with TypeKey?

You can set your Weblog Comment Preferences so that comment authentication is required. If set to Required, then users must first create or login to an existing TypeKey account prior to submitting a comment. If it is set to Optional users can submit comments without first logging into TypeKey.

How can I review comments before they are published?

Using TypePad's comment moderation features, you can set your Weblog Comment Preferences so that all comments are held for approval before they are published.

Also see TypePad Help: Managing Comments

How did somebody comment on my password-protected site?

It is possible to have comments fed into a password-protected weblog because spammers do not have to visit a site to post a comment on it.

Nobody can view your password-protected site without the password.

How do I post a comment if I'm blocked as an open proxy?

Open proxies are blocked from commenting on TypePad weblogs. For further details, see Everything TypePad! TypePad vs. Comment Spammers

If you are blocked as an open proxy, you can still post your comment. Use the image that you will see on the comment page if you are blocked. In the text box, type in the text you see displayed in the image to prove that you are a person and your comment will be submitted.

I received an email notification about a comment that no longer exists. What happened?

We now republish weblogs on which we have detected comment spam. If you have a comment on your site that does not appear in your List Comments, it is because we already removed it for you!

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