They hide behind seemingly innocent comments and play on your need for validation.

It’s the polite spammer – the cruelest form of spamming.

You’ve Got Mail!

I remember my early days on the internet when AOL was king.

I loved that voice telling me, “You’ve got mail.” A comment on a newer blog evokes the same joy. And that’s what makes the polite spammer so cruel.

Polite spammers are joy-busters.

You’ve Got Spam!

Recently, I participated in a 30-day, Ultimate Blog Challenge. It was great. I met new bloggers and visited many of their blogs.

It was that same challenge that helped me better identify my audience for this blog.

It is people like me, who have not been running a business blog for a long time – and – who like to –

Keep it simple, clear & uniquely yours.

When I visited some of the blogs, here are some of the comments I saw.

• Great post – nice job
• I like your blog – super effort
• You are a great writer. I really enjoyed this post.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Chances are, it’s spam.

Spam Be Gone!

On Techie Tips Thursday, I offer very basic tips or refer you to the experts. Here are a few tips for kicking those polite spammers to the curb.

1. Make sure you have a good spam plugin.

Akismet is already loaded into WordPress. It does a great job of catching most of those polite spammers.

Another plugin, recommended by techie-types, is Bad Behavior. It works well with Akismet and blocks spam bots.

Bots are computer programs that automate repetitive tasks. Like most things internet, there are good bots and bad bots.

• Good Bot – one example is the Google bot for collecting data for its search engine
• Bad Bot – one of the main functions is sending spam

2. Automatically screen your comments.

In WordPress, you can set up your blog so that first-time commenters need your approval before the comment is posted.

Here is how you do that.

1. Click on Settings
2. Click on Discussions
3. Go to Before a comment appears and check Comment author must have previously approved comment

What #3 does is automatically approve comments from someone you have previously authorized. You can hold all comments for your approval, but personally, I find that to be a pain.

Additional Tips

• Notification – Check both boxes after Email me whenever to be notified when someone comments and when one is held for moderation
• Extra security – hold comments for moderation whenever they have a specified number of links in the comment. I have mine set at 2.

3. Manually Screening.

If the comments got past your spam filter, you can pick up clues on the spammers. Here is a great post and list at All Freelance Writing (AFW).

By the way, if you have not put this site into your email or RSS feed, I highly recommend it. It is one of the best blogs for nuts and bolts advice.

I Love You, Man!

After you have your spam-filtering in place, do not forget to periodically check the spam folder. As some of us found from the Ultimate Blog Challenge, legitimate comments can end up in the spam folder.

• Use above settings – once you approve their comment, you should not have the problem in the future
• Use AFW suggestions – see the list on How to Identify Blog Comment Spam
• Ultimate Blog Challenge –  going to their site to see if the person’s name was listed helped me

Everyone appreciates the love, but when it is the phony, self-serving spammer, you feel cheated.

Write great content, and you, too, will be loved.

P.S. Reading some of the comments in the spam folder can be quite entertaining. That’s about the only thing I can thank spammers for.

What have you done to stop polite spammers?

iStock Photo Credit: sdart

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Helping you Keep it simple, clear & uniquely yours – contact me for help with your business writing needs.

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