Combating Comment Spam: An Update

Today, we want to address the recent spam attack that caused many of our bloggers to experience a sudden and very unfortunate influx of comment spam. We were just as frustrated as you were by the situation, and fixing it was our top priority.

Last week, we worked closely with Impermium to fix the problem.  They quickly made several changes to limit the number of comments that were getting through the filter.  Additionally, we changed some default behaviors on our end which should also help reduce the spam you receive.

If you're noticing legitimate comments are being caught in the spam filter, you can publish those via the Comments tab by selecting the "spam comments" in the drop down menu.

We're working hard to figure out why this is happening, and we need your help. If your legitimate comments are being caught, please publish them and open a Help ticket that includes a link to the comment. Essential information like this will help us get to the bottom of things more quickly.

We appreciate you sticking with us as we continue the good fight against spammers!

Comments

[Vicki Welsh]

Are you saying that the spam issue is fixed? I've never had a problem until the last 2 days and I am getting bombarded with spam. If there was a fix it didn't work. Legitimate comments are not getting caught but I am getting dozens of spam comments and it only started 2 days ago....after your fix.

[Ashley AccidentalOlympian]

When will the merg with Disquis be finalized? Thanks!

[Rick Kosick]

Thank you.... This spam problem was driving me crazy.

[hewn & hammered]

But how will you help those of us who have thousands of spam comments get rid of them? We need a MUCH better way to do this - like seeing ALL of them on one page and not having to click on them over 100 pages of comments, which can take many hours.

I'd rather select ALL of my messages, then unclick the legitimate ones, and mark the clicked as spam. The current system is unwieldy.

Yet one more thing that would have been improved long ago under 6A and which languishes under the new management.

[Bill Vallicella]

Spam comments are easily deleted all at once. But why not trackbacks?

[Sonia]

I am still experiencing a lot of SPAM in the last two days, since your 'fix'. My Road Runner account has kept some from reaching my mail box, but of course, they still remain on TypePad for approval or deletion until I can get to them...Needless to say, it is very annoying.

Several of them, although using different computers and e-mail addresses/websites use the same 'canned messages' with many of the same grammatical errors.

[Kymberlie]

Hi Vicki,

Taking a look at your account, you're actually one of our users that haven't been migrated to Impermium yet, so these changes won't affect your account as significantly.

The changes we've made with Impermium should help us get everyone moved over to their system soon, though. We do apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work on getting you moved over.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Ashley,

Do you mean Impermium as opposed to Disqus? We're evaluating the changes and this will help us evaluate the final rollout that still needs to be done.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Rick,

You're welcome! Thanks for your patience while this was being worked on.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi there,

I've replied back to your ticket with an option that should help you out.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Ashley AccidentalOlympian]

No I mean Disquis. In a help ticket I was told you guys were soon going to be rolling out a new relationship with integrated Disquis comments...

[Kymberlie]

Hi Bill,

We've removed the ability to send Trackbacks within Typepad (http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2013/01/tips-for-tricky-trackbacks.html) but you may still have older ones within your blog.

If that's the case, you can either ignore them since no new ones will be coming in or you can delete them 20 at a time, the same as you do for comments.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Sonia,

If the comment is identified as spam, then a comment notification is not sent by Typepad and the post is sent to your spam comment section. It sounds like this is why you didn't see e-mails on them.

We do understand that it's frustrating to get spam and we're continuing to work closely with Imperium to improve the numbers you're seeing. Approving or deleting the ones that do make it through is one of the best ways for the system to learn, though.

We apologize that this is as pain. Thanks for sticking with us.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Prima Marketing]

Could you send me that information as well? I need to be able to delete a lot of spam comments at once. Thank you!

[Bill Vallicella]

Spam comments can be deleted all at once. Why not the same with old trackbacks?

[Kiril Kundurazieff]

I've been dealing with a thousand to 3000 spam a day for a long time.

Most get caught and not posted before I can delete, but I just got tired of it and went to the capcha.

That has apparently ended both problems....for now

[Kymberlie]

Hi Ashley,

Thanks for clarifying.

We are working on getting Disqus comments integrated into Typepad but some higher priority items (including spam) have caused this to be pushed back some. We are looking into adding it as soon as possible.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Tami,

I opened a ticket and replied to you there. You can go to Help > Past Tickets to find it.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Bill,

We don't have this option within Typepad and since Trackbacks are now disabled, will not be adding it in the future.

This section is just to allow you to see past Trackbacks you've received; you won't get new spam Trackbacks listed here. It sounds like you will most likely just want to ignore this section as opposed to actually taking any time to delete them at this point.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Kiril,

We're glad to hear it's made a difference!

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Bill Vallicella]

Thank you for your response. I know that no new trackbacks come in, but dont the old ones eat up bandwidth such that it would be good to get rid of them? Doesnt the bandwidth I use affect what I pay? I understand how to get rid of them; it is just that it is a pain to have to go page by page.

Thank you for your patience!

[Quing Obillos]

I've noticed that spam in comments have been occurring ever since. I hope Typepad would have full integration with other commenting platforms such as Disqus, which I have been using. :) My only problem with using Disqus is that the comment count does not apprear on the post footer.

[Kymberlie]

Hi Bill,

All accounts have unlimited storage and bandwidth, so any old Trackbacks won't count against you.

We're also going to be looking into purging older comments/Trackbacks like this on the backend, but it's not really something you need to worry about as far as Trackbacks are concerned. I'd hate for you to be deleting these older spam Trackbacks for no reason.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Michael Libbie]

Thank you TYPEPAD! We've experienced a butt load of spam on our blogs but, once we brought it to your attention it has slowed down to a trickle if that.

A question, when we report as SPAM does that help you more to fight the issue rather than having us simply delete?

Thanks again!

[Bri]

Hi Michael! Absolutely mark the spam comments as spam since that helps teach the filter what to look out for, learn current spam trends, IP addresses the spam bots are using, and more. :D

[John Post, MD]

I never had spam when I was on blogger but moved to typepad for my own identity. The spam here has worn me out...cheap Oakleys...Michael Kors bags....and I'm working on moving to Wordpress. Also, the ability of people randomly searching the net for info ending up viewing blog seems far below that of blogger. Sorry but for these two reasons I doubt I'll renew.

John

[Sonia]

Thank you, Kimberlie

No, the SPAM comments are not being identified as
SPAM...I can just tell by the URL usually included or by how they respond...most
are not in command of the English language, and although I do have some
subscribers for whom English is not their first language, I can tell them from
the SPAM by what is in the comment itself.

Thanks!

[scrappin' girlfriends]

I just want to thank you for helping me fix our spam issue. We have not had any problems at all in the past week! YEAH!
michele
scrappin' girlfriends

[Suburban Homestead]

I closed my comment months ago because of spam so I've not been affected by the recent push of spammers. What I would like to know is why I can't delete the followers in bulk? Most of my followers are spammers (I know this because they all have the same about info, and because they are all following the same 89 blogs). I gave up deleting them because I have to do it individually and there are thousands. If I could go in and delete them in large groups (25-50 at a time even) it would be SO helpful and would allow me to open my comments again to legitimate readers. Thanks for listening!

[Sallie (FullTime-Life)]

I was spared being inundated, but after reading this post I went (for the first time) to the drop down menu to look at my spam comment box and was absolutely blown away by the number of comments that were caught without my ever seeing them. (I have seen a few spam comments over the years, in fact got one this morning, but never anything unmanageable and easy to delete).

Anyway, in that drop down, I did notice quite a few comments that were NOT spam -- most from regular commenters on my blog.

So I scrolled back several pages worth and checked "publish" on the ones that were OK...they disappeared from the spam list. But I don't think they ever actually got published. How come? And how come they went to spam in the first place? Nearly all of them were people who had commented before and/or since. I deleted the whole spam box after I had published (or so I thought) the ones that were OK.

Anyway it seems like on my blog the spam filters have been doing a pretty good job -- and I will check the drop down frequently from now on and hopefully republish the ones that should have got published. Let me know if there's any way to get back kthose comments that should have been published.

[Suburban Homestead]

I meant to say *block* not *delete*. I would love to know how to block spammers from following me in bulk. Thanks!

[Kymberlie]

Hi Sallie,

We're working closely with Impermium to determine why these comments are incorrectly being identified as spam. If you see these in the future, please do send us the links to the comments to help us out with that.

The comments will retain their actual posting date, so if you published older comments, then they're most likely further back than the first page of your comments section. If you scroll through your comments, do you see them listed?

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi there,

We're looking into adding the ability to block multiple followers at once, but we don't have a time frame for when this will be ready. Thanks for letting us know you'd find it useful, though!

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Michele,

We're so glad to hear that!

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Adam]

Well, I wasn't expecting to find good news buried in this thread - but there it is! Disqus plans make me happy…

[Tracy]

I am not having a problem with spam comments, but my readers are still saying their comments disappear, so I check spam comments regularly, but there's nothing there. Where are their comments going?

[Sallie (FullTime-Life)]

TypePad HTML Email

Kymberlie, here are links to the websites of four valid
comments that were put into the spam box today (or yesterday
probably). I was successful in publishing them.

Thank you for your help.

http://ramblingwoods.com/

http://www.missingthemomgene.com/

http://www.acreativeharbor.com/

http://nfbild2.blogspot.se/

[Sallie (FullTime-Life)]

Here is another one.

http://www.myqualitytime.net/

All five of these are legitimate blogsites and are people who have read and commmented on my posts off and on for many months.

[Tara Bradford]

Just came back from a trip and had 121 spam messages! Obviously the problem remains ongoing.

[Sallie (FullTime-Life)]

Comments from this blogger: http://ramblingwoods.com/ are still being put in the spam box in error and are not reappearing where they are supposed to. Every few days it seems, one or two other legitimate comments get put into spam in error, but they do transfer manually. This one site does not for some reason.

[Somalikitchen]

Hi Kymberlie
Can you please send me the same information too
Abderazzaq

[Kymberlie]

Hi there,

I opened a ticket and replied to you there. You can go to Help > Past Tickets to find it.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Quing,

We are looking into implementing Disqus into Typepad. When we do, the comment count will be reflected in the post footer.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi John,

Taking a look at your account, you're also one of our users that haven't been migrated to Impermium yet, so these changes won't affect your account as much as those that have been moved over.

The changes we've made with Impermium should help us get everyone moved over to their system soon, though. We do apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work on getting you moved over.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Sallie,

Would it be possible for you to open a help ticket with the links to the direct comments?

For instance, to get the direct URL for your comment, you'd copy the date of your comment. In this case, for example, it would be as follows:
http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2013/05/combating-comment-spam-an-update.html#comment-6a00d83451c82369e2017eeb44c2d7970d

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Tracy,

I opened a ticket and replied to you there. You can go to Help > Past Tickets to find it.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Kymberlie]

Hi Tara,

Are these spam comments that are being sent to the spam section correctly or are these comments that aren't being identified as spam?

If you could open a help ticket and give us some more information on the issue, that would be great.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

[Quing Obillos]

That's great to hear, Kymberlie! Will be looking forward to that. :D