Comment Spam Is Dangerous BS!

If you’ve ever wondered why comments on this site, and many other sites for that matter, are held for moderation by a site administrator, the simple answer is – comment spam, and the need to control it.

Without a doubt, comments are an important part of the mix for a technology site. Comments can spark discussion (always a good thing), allow a reader to present his/her point of view, share tech wisdom, or spread the word on a unique piece of software.

But, comments are not without their share of issues; with comment Spam, in my view, being a significant problem. Spam is virtually everywhere on the Internet. In your inbox, on Twitter and Facebook and other social networks, and so it’s not surprising that you’ll find Spam comments. Recently however, I’ve seen a major increase in the amount of comment Spam.

The following comment spam (full of praise – like many are), is just a small example of the type of nonsense Spam I deal with daily. (click on the screen capture to expand to original size – 1280 x 589).

Take a look at this one, and try to imagine the type of creep who would submit this as a comment.

Hard as it is to believe, there are many sites that rely only on a Spam filter to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Unfortunately, this complacency can lead to the posting of comment Spam that contains dangerous links. Links, which if followed, can lead to a malware site – guaranteeing a very painful experience. The comment shown above, for example, contains a number of malicious links.

Some advice:

Be cautious when following links contained in comments on any web site.

Be particularly cautious of comments, on any web site, where the writer is describing a problem with recommended software and offers a link to alternative software.  This is a favorite technique employed by cyber-criminals.

Be cautious when following any link contained in any web site, since the latest reports indicate there are 5.8 million individual web pages infected across 640,000 compromised websites. Cyber-criminals are finding it easier than ever to inject malicious content into legitimate sites.

Be cautious following links on web forums. Forums can often be a source of dangerous links.

Since the majority of infected sites are infected with Java based scripts, consider using Firefox with the NoScript add-on active. NoScript offers superior protection.

Install an Internet Browser add-on that provides protection against questionable or unsafe websites. My personal favorite is Web of Trust, an Internet Explorer/Firefox add-on, that offers substantial protection against questionable, or unsafe websites.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

The Comical Comment Spammer

Regular readers are familiar with my articles on comment spam and how, in some instances, it can be dangerous. The last time we discussed this was in Norton DNS Can Save Your Butt!

It’s really a no-brainer to reject a spam comment that looks like this –

Get free laptop, this is not scam! visit: [url=]http://……………………[/url]

But, despite the fact that the following is a spam comment, I had to laugh. I’ll give this spammer points for creativity. Now, his creativity, coupled with ethics and a little bit of common sense, (if he had any), might convince him to find another line of work!

HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia url=http://www…………………………[/url] ……….……. and being forced to post spam comments on blogs and forum! If you don’t approve this they will kill me [url=http://www.male-sexual-styles………………………………….. They’re coming back now. xyzrxyz [url=http://pills.buypenisenlargement………………………………….. Please send help! [url=http://www.male-sexual.…………………………………………..

While this spam comment is absurdly comical, I have no doubt whatsoever, that someone, somewhere, will take this as a serious comment and allow it. Bloggers, just like computer users, aren’t immune to naiveté.

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Follow the Link and You “Takes Your Chances”

Regular readers on this site are aware, that virtually all downloads I recommend, are linked to CNET (download.com).

There is good reason for this – CNET scrupulously audits hosted downloads and linked sites, to ensure they are not contaminated by malware.

But links on Blogs can be a special problem for surfers – particularly links contained in comments. Don’t get me wrong –  comments are an important part of the blogging mix.

Amongst other things, comments can spark discussion (always a good thing), allow a reader to present his/her point of view, share tech wisdom, or spread the word on a unique piece of software.

But, Blog comments are not without their share of issues; with comment Spam (some containing malicious links), being the leading problem.

Spam is virtually everywhere on the Internet. In your inbox, on Twitter and Facebook, and other social networks, and so it’s not surprising that you’ll find Spam Blog comments.

WordPress, on which this Blog is hosted, has a Spam plug-in filter, Akismet, which does a good job of catching comment spam. Akismet automatically analyzes comments and flags for review, those it considers Spam.

On this Blog, Akismet routinely captures about 90% of spam comments, according to my blog stats. In real number terms, Akismet has captured in excess of 60,000 spam comments here, in the past two years. But what about the other 10%? – some of which will contain malicious links?

As a matter of policy, I test every allowed link included in a comment, for safety.

Regretfully, there are Bloggers who are fairly complacent and who rely only on a Spam filter to do this job. In doing so, they miss the reality: Spam filters can often miss comment spam, some of which are highly dangerous.

While comment Spam is a pain for the Blogger, a reader who follows a link in a malicious Blog comment, which leads to a malware site, is in for a very painful experience.

Here’s a case in point – any time I write on registry cleaners I can expect the following comment, (shown in the following screen capture), or one like it, to show up.

This comment included a link, to a free application, which supposedly is superior to the free application I recommended in the article.

The comment itself looks harmless, but if I’d allowed this comment to be posted (and I’ve seen this comment published many times over, on many other sites), a reader who followed the link would have become infected simply by visiting the site.

Don’t think that this is an unusual set of circumstances – it’s not. On an average day, here on Tech Thoughts, 10 or more comments (thankfully picked up by Akismet), contain malicious, or dangerous links.

Some advice:

Be cautious when following links contained in comments on any web site – not just Blogs.

Be particularly cautious of comments, on any web site, where the writer is describing a problem with recommended software and offers a link to alternative software.  This is a favorite technique employed by cyber-criminals. All software reviewed on this site, for example, has been thoroughly tested, by me, for usability. If a reader has a problem with recommended software, it’s generally a machine specific problem.

Be cautious when following any link contained in any web page. Recent reports indicate there are 5.8 million individual web pages infected across 640,000 compromised websites. Cyber-criminals are finding it easier than ever to inject malicious content into legitimate sites.

Since the majority of infected sites are infected with Java based scripts, consider using Firefox with the NoScript add-on. NoScript offers superior protection.

Install an Internet Browser add-on that provides protection against questionable, or unsafe websites. My personal favorite is Web of Trust, an Internet Explorer/Firefox add-on, that offers substantial protection against questionable, or unsafe websites.

Use Norton DNS as an added safety precaution.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

A Message for Spam Commenters – WTF!

For many Bloggers, particularly technology Bloggers, comments are an important part of the mix. Amongst other things, comments can spark discussion (always a good thing), allow a reader to present his/her point of view, share tech wisdom, or spread the word on a unique piece of software.

But, Blog comments are not without their share of issues; with comment Spam, in my view, being the leading problem. Spam is virtually everywhere on the Internet. In your inbox, on Twitter and Facebook and other social networks, and so it’s not surprising that you’ll find Spam Blog comments.

Let me throw some numbers at you. In the roughly two years I have been writing this Blog, there have been 67,000+ comments of which 59,000 +  have been Spam. In other words only 8,000 (approximately), have been legitimate comments.

WordPress, on which this Blog is hosted, has a Spam plug-in filter, Akismet, which does a reasonable job of catching comment spam. Akismet automatically analyzes comments and flags for review, those it considers Spam. This is not as effective as it once was, since it’s now much harder to distinguish Spam comments from legitimate comments.

Except of course, for comments that look like these two examples from this morning:

Itboibltlx – fAHU7K kfyvjnunmugw, [url=http://avfqgyvilzvj.com/]avfqgyvilzvj[/url], [link=http://jlroercbkvod.com/]jlroercbkvod[/link], http://sjxsnveldoke.com/

Rzjulixnne – JvgMqE sakykccvvzrv, [url=http://dpbvrodxgikt.com/]dpbvrodxgikt[/url], [link=http://tiewycygcttc.com/]tiewycygcttc[/link], http://etukxnfppged.com/

When you see this type of comment, you have to wonder about these morons.

Since it takes time and effort to manually cull comments so that they are  relevant and Spam free, there are Bloggers who are fairly complacent and who rely only on a Spam filter to do this job. In doing so, they miss the reality: Spam filters can often miss comment spam, some of which is highly dangerous.

While comment Spam is a pain for the Blogger, a reader who follows a link in a malicious Blog comment, which leads to a malware site, is in for a very painful experience.

Here’s a case in point – just this past week (and not for the first time), a site which is renown as a site that specializes in malicious content, left a comment which was not filtered by Akismet. This comment included a link, to a free application, which supposedly was superior to the free application I recommended in the article.

The comment itself looks harmless – but you pay me to be careful – right?

If I’d allowed this comment to be posted (and I’ve seen this comment published many times, on many other sites), a reader who followed the link would have become infected simply by visiting the site.

Don’t think that this is an unusual set of circumstances – it’s not. On an average day, 10 or more comments (thankfully picked up by Akismet), contain malicious or dangerous links.

Some advice:

Be cautious when following links contained in comments on any web site – not just Blogs.

Be particularly cautious of comments, on any web site, where the writer is describing a problem with recommended software and offers a link to alternative software.  This is a favorite technique employed by cyber-criminals. All software reviewed on this site, for example, has been thoroughly tested for usability. If a reader has a problem with recommended software, it’s generally a machine specific problem.

Be cautious when following any link contained in any web site, since the latest reports indicate there are 5.8 million individual web pages infected across 640,000 compromised websites. Cyber-criminals are finding it easier than ever to inject malicious content into legitimate sites.

Since the majority of infected sites are infected with Java based scripts, consider using Firefox with the NoScript add-on active. NoScript offers superior protection.

Install an Internet Browser add-on that provides protection against questionable or unsafe websites. My personal favorite is Web of Trust, an Internet Explorer/FireFox add-on, that offers substantial protection against questionable, or unsafe websites.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Dangerous Comment Spam – Deadly Links

For many Bloggers, particularly technology Bloggers, comments are an important part of the mix. Amongst other things, comments can spark discussion (always a good thing), allow a reader to present his/her point of view, share tech wisdom, or spread the word on a unique piece of software.

But, Blog comments are not without their share of issues; with comment Spam, in my view, being the leading problem. Spam is virtually everywhere on the Internet. In your inbox, on Twitter and Facebook and other social networks, and so it’s not surprising that you’ll find Spam Blog comments.

Let me throw some numbers at you. In the roughly two years I have been writing this Blog, there have been 61,560 comments of which 55,957 have been Spam. In other words only 5,603 have been legitimate comments or, barely 1 in 10.

WordPress, on which this Blog is hosted, has a Spam plug-in filter, Akismet, which does a reasonable job of catching comment spam. Akismet automatically analyzes comments and flags for review, those it considers Spam. This is not as effective as it once was, since it’s now much harder to distinguish Spam comments from legitimate comments.

Since it takes time and effort to manually cull comments so that they are  relevant and Spam free, there are Bloggers who are fairly complacent and who rely only on a Spam filter to do this job. In doing so, they miss the reality: Spam filters can often miss comment spam, some of which is highly dangerous.

While comment Spam is a pain for the Blogger, a reader who follows a link in a malicious Blog comment, which leads to a malware site, is in for a very painful experience.

Here’s a case in point – just this past week (and not for the first time), a site which is renown as a site that specializes in malicious content, left a comment which was not filtered by Akismet. This comment included a link, to a free application, which supposedly was superior to the free application I recommended in the article.

The comment itself looks harmless – but you pay me to be careful – right?

If I’d allowed this comment to be posted (and I’ve seen this comment published many times, on many other sites), a reader who followed the link would have become infected simply by visiting the site.

Don’t think that this is an unusual set of circumstances – it’s not. On an average day, 10 or more comments (thankfully picked up by Akismet), contain malicious or dangerous links.

Some advice:

Be cautious when following links contained in comments on any web site – not just Blogs.

Be particularly cautious of comments, on any web site, where the writer is describing a problem with recommended software and offers a link to alternative software.  This is a favorite technique employed by cyber-criminals. All software reviewed on this site, for example, has been thoroughly tested for usability. If a reader has a problem with recommended software, it’s generally a machine specific problem.

Be cautious when following any link contained in any web site, since the latest reports indicate there are 5.8 million individual web pages infected across 640,000 compromised websites. Cyber-criminals are finding it easier than ever to inject malicious content into legitimate sites.

Since the majority of infected sites are infected with Java based scripts, consider using Firefox with the NoScript add-on active. NoScript offers superior protection.

Install an Internet Browser add-on that provides protection against questionable or unsafe websites. My personal favorite is Web of Trust, an Internet Explorer/FireFox add-on, that offers substantial protection against questionable or unsafe websites.

If you enjoyed this article, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Every Good Story Needs a Villain!

This is a guest post by Paul Eckstrom, a technology wizard and the owner of Aplus Computer Aid in Menlo Park, California.

Paul adds a nice humorous touch to serious computer technology issues. Why not pay a visit to his Blog Tech–for Everyone.

This story opens gently enough. It begins with a friendly and helpful Comment posted on a friendly and helpful blog.

Someone had written to share “the results of their work”, which he said “solved his security problems.” He was talking about viruses and spyware, and other malware, and he said his method “covers 99.8%! of all known threats.” He posted his advice/Comment on an article about How To prevent the dangers posed by spyware (and also warns about “rogue” anti-spyware programs). He signed himself “Spycrasher”.

So far, this all sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? 99.8% effective certainly sounds good.

As you have probably deduced, Dear Reader, the “friendly and helpful blog” in question was this one. Tech–for Everyone, like most blogs, provides readers the opportunity to respond, ask a question, or just “put in their two cents”, simply by clicking on “Comments” at the bottom of the article. And also like most blogs, I have the ability to “moderate” which comments get posted and which don’t– for instance, Comments containing offensive language will not be published. Spycrasher’s 99.8%- effective security solution will NOT be seen here.

But.. maybe you’re a little curious as to what it was. And.. maybe, why I deleted it. (Take another peek at today’s title..) “Spycrasher’s” comment said to use three particular anti-spyware programs– in tandem– and he provided download links. (This, alone, triggers red flags.) He mentioned two tools I was not familiar with, and one rather well-known program.

* Hyperlinks are always suspicious (and blocked as a matter of policy), and the first thing I checked was, did the links point to legitimate websites..? Or would clicking on them take you to a poisoned webpage (which could infect your machine) or a pharming site.

No problem there. The links he provided did indeed point to real websites.

* The next thing was to check out the unknown programs themselves. No self-respecting and legitimate tech writer will advocate something they have not used, and tested, themselves. Period.

In my initial research of the first program (XoftSpy-SE), I found a wide range of reviews and comments.. from “this is rogue” to “this is the best thing since sliced bread”, and I learned that the program was “for pay”.
I don’t promote “for pay” software here (but do provide a daily free download), nor, even potentially rogue app’s; and so I stopped right there. I would not allow Spycrasher’s Comment.

· Being the gentleman that I am, I decided to write Spycrasher and thank him for his submission, and explain why I had moderated it. But before I did, I wanted to get a feel for where he was coming from.. so I ran a Whois on his IP…

Now, I gotta tell you.. it is very rare for ARIN to come back with a “no match found”. Very, very strange.

So I traced him.

New York >London >Amsterdam >Berlin >Warsaw…

And then he disappears into a virtual private network somewhere in the Ukraine.

Odd.

* So I used a search engine to find instances of the word “Spycrasher”… and he came up a lot. Spycrasher likes to post in various forums. Quite a few of them, actually. Like, practically all of them.
And he posts a lot of Comments there.
* Guess what? They are all identical to the the one he posted (I should say “pasted”) on mine.. right down to the ‘wink’ smiley ;-).

Very.. odd.

Tip of the day: Be very leery of hyperlinks, folks.. and please understand: not every innocent looking thing you see on the Internet is in fact “friendly and helpful”. There are people whose full-time job it is to try to trick you, and seduce you into doing something you normally wouldn’t.
I am very sad to say.

[note to bloggers/forum moderators/webmasters: you may want to search your published pages for instances of “Spycrasher”, and delete this guy.]

Today’s free link: I am going to repost a program here today, because I have it on every single one of my (Windows) machines, and I think you should too. ThreatFire (originally named “CyberHawk”) is a free, behavior-based anti-malware application. I use it as a supplement to my antivirus and other anti-spyware tools. Heuristic tools like ThreatFire are your only defense against “zero day” exploits.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved*