human spam

Posted by cwage @ 01/27/2006

So, since I wrote and implemented wordverify, I have only had two comment spams slip by. They were both human-driven. I could see a clear path of them coming in to the site, go to a post, submit the comment, and get the "Please enter the security word" failure, go back, and then successfully post the comment.

It appears the reality of human-driven comment-spam is upon us. The most recent one I received is below:

Author: Colorado Health Insurance
E-mail: vpatel@acsseo.com
URL: http://www.abrams-california-health-insurance.com/
Comment: Great blog I hope we can work to build a better health care system as we are in a major crisis and health insurance is a major aspect to many.

Interestingly, acsseo.com is actually an SEO (search-engine optimization) company. Could they be a "black hat" SEO company? Could they really have been so stupid as to have employees comment-spamming for their clients to increase page-rank while leaving their actual e-mail address? It's possible that the address could have just been spoofed.

I have called the 800 number and left a message for "V. Patel" asking him to call me back, but I have not heard anything yet.

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Comments

[...] It’s for this reason

Submitted by My Quiet Life » comment verification (not verified) on Mon, 12/04/2006 - 22:25.

[...] It’s for this reason that I beg to differ with Jeffraham P who says that it’s “cool, but easily defeated by spammers with skillz.” It’s not. It’s easily defeated by spammers with more free time than me, intent on specifically spamming my blog. This is almost guaranteed to never happen. It’s been almost a year since I wrote and installed Wordverify, and in that time I’ve gotten approximately 0 automated comment spam. I don’t think MQL has even had a human spammer (the Centresource blog has, however, but that’s another story). [...]

[...] Earlier today, I

Submitted by CentreSource: Blog » Advantage Consulting Services: Sp (not verified) on Sat, 01/28/2006 - 04:40.

[...] Earlier today, I posted about spam received in a blog comment that was clearly posted by an actual person. In that post, I mentioned tracking down (not hard in this case) and calling the company that appeared to be behind the spam, Advantage Consulting Services. Surprisingly, “V. Patel” called me back. [...]