Content that attracts SPAM posts
April 11th, 2006So I boasted many months ago that singletracks had never been form-spammed but my installation of BBlog was getting form-spammed every few hours. During this period even my new Word Press blog received its fair share of spam posts (though these were easily deleted and never made it to the live site). Then it happened: singletracks started getting spammed!
The form bots were able to choose the pull down menu on the review page for their location (for some reason all were choosing Austria, which was neither the first nor the last location in the list). Anyway, the posts came about 1 a day and they all seemed to be targeting the same trail page: GMA Trails in Cumming, GA. At first I thought it strange since the GMA Trails are probably one of the least popular trails on the site (in fact they are closed) but then it hit me: the spam bots were looking for Cumming (get it?)!
I noticed the same pattern with my Word Press posts; those with provocative subjects (like Internet business ideas) attracted the most spam while others (like Backpacking in Texas) drew no attention. Boy, those spammers are smart!
In the end I decided to require users to be logged in to post reviews on singletracks, ending 8 years of anonymous posting bliss, but no worries. Almost every forum I’ve ever been a part of required users to be registered and logged in to post so why shouldn’t singletracks be the same? Well played spammers, but I’m afraid you’ll have to find a new way.
