blog comment spammers search my blog in vain for the number -1
This is a short blog post to point out a trick being used by blog spammers to test to see if their comments have been published or not. It has been appearing in my blog's activity log for at least a half year, or longer.
Most comment and trackback spam is in the form of links to fake online drugstores (selling counterfeit prescription medicine and lifestyle drugs without a prescription), or bogus weight-loss remedies, or counterfeit watches, or work at home - money mule scams. My solution to that type of junk was simple: I turned off Comments and Trackbacks on my blog!
Despite these features being turned off, online spammers routinely search my blog for the same two numbers in sequence. These numbers and characters are: 1 and -1'. The code I see in my raw access logs is actually the following:
GET /cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?includeblogs=-1%27&search=1&
GET /cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?includeblogs=1&search=-1%27&
These two searches always appear after a GET for one of my blog article pages, or categories or dates. These searches never lead to a results page. Still, they keep searching, in vain. Blog spammers are a dumb lot of morons, usually based in Latvia, Russia, the Ukraine, or some other former Soviet Union country. English is not their main language and in fact, they may not read it at all. But, most can recognize the number 1, or -1'.
If you run a blog and allow comments and trackbacks, moderate them before allowing them to appear. Google is cracking down hard on blogs and forums that contain lots of spam comments and trackbacks. If you have a lot on your blogs, delete them and set all future comments to be moderated. Install an anti-spam module also, to reduce your workload. Or, if like me you don't want user feedback, just disable Comments and Trackbacks!
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