Last week I wrote this post about the problems I’d been having with spam. Followers had been receiving a lot of spam emails, as replies to comments on my blog. I was horrified. What a bad way to promote your blog! The weird thing was that I did not receive notifications through my blog about the spam emails. I want to thank those who reached out to me to tell me about the problem because I never would have known!
The problem started back in March and I wrote another post about all the spam comments on my blog. Akismet was doing their job catching them and rerouting them to my spam folder but they had become a nuisance to delete because the comments were coming in fast and furious. A couple people told me that the spam folders emptied automatically, so I let it go for a bit. Not true for my free blog because next time I checked, I had about 35,000 spam comments and it took me a couple hours to delete them all.
I tried to stay upbeat about it and made this video making fun of the insulting comments (some were pretty amusing), but the volume of spam bothered me! I contacted the Happiness Engineers at WordPress and they suggested I change my password, enable two-step authentication and consider closing my comments. I did the first two (did not want to close comments!) and for a while, the spam was under control…until recently.
Back to the Happiness Engineers who directed me to my blog’s Discussion settings, but they did not tell me what to do. So I made some decisions on my own: I turned off pingbacks and trackbacks and reluctantly closed comments after 30 days.
Since then I’ve received ZERO spam comments on my blog. I have not heard from any of you about spam emails. I hope they have also stopped. Please let me know if you are still receiving them. If you are having the same problems on your blog, I strongly recommend turning off pingbacks and trackbacks.
Now I am finished talking about spam and will resume reading. I hope you are all having a nice September Saturday!
Thanks for visiting – come back soon!
Book Club Mom 
You are just TOO popular, dear!
Haha – that’s a nice way to look at things!
No more spam comments.
Great news, John!
😊
Problem rectified, Barbara, at least on my end. ☺️
So glad -thank you, Jennifer!
Nothing here. Have a good Saturday.
I never had any spam comments from you Barbara. I’m glad you are able to reinstate comments.
Thanks, Robbie – I still have the comments closed after 30 days. I’d like to change that back, but I’m going to wait a bit to see.
I’m good following your recommendations. Thanks 🙂
Thank you, Rosaliene!
I set my blog as only allowing to post the comments after I approve them. So the spam goes automatically to the spam list.
It’s also a nice way for me to be sure I track every comment and visit back and comment on whomever took time to leave a comment at my place – and that’s why I came to visit you today!
About once a week, I go quickly through my spam list, to be sure no good comment went there.
I also use wordpress.com
Good advice. It seems to keep getting more complicated, doesn’t it?
Yes it does. Thanks JT!
Happy Saturday, Sunday, Monday. . . !
We can be happy because of/in spite of Happiness Engineers, Barb!
Thanks, Marian!
I haven’t had a problem with your blog and spam, but I am SO sorry you had to deal with this headache! Glad it’s better now!!!
Thanks, Betsy! So far so good and I’m glad you aren’t receiving spam email from me 😊
Spam is the worse. I’m glad you’ve figured out a way to get rid of it. Still, the real question is, at least for me, why does it even happen? Shaking my head as I wander off to contemplate…
Thanks, Ally! It’s an army of bots. And they constantly seek new ways to get in. Like anything that is online users have to protect themselves. Frustrating because the technology can be overwhelming.
I’m pleased it seems resolved – and not surprised that you should have had to do it yourself
Yes – with a free blog I can’t really complain about the WP advice. And it’s like anything else – you have to make your own decisions. A little support is nice though…🙂
That’s interesting about turning off pingbacks and trackbacks, Barbara. I wonder why that makes a diffrence.
It’s the world we live in. We have to deal with it.
You’re right – spammers, scammers and bots are here to stay. Thanks, Tim!
I’m glad I don’t get that many spam comments or emails. These days, I make sure I look at both my email spam folder and my comments every day – sometimes a couple of times a day!
That’s a good policy, Davida. Thanks for the visit!
I’m glad the problem has been resolved, Barbara. Happy Sunday! 🙂
Me too – thanks, Lauren!
Hi, Barb – All the spam comments that I received last month from your blog are now all gone. You have done an awesome job eliminating spam. I currently have 439 spam comments – but I never delete them. Mine do eventually go away on their own (she says with confidence)! 😀
Hi Donna – I’m so glad you’re not getting more emails from me! I wonder if mine weren’t deleted automatically because I have a free blog! I used to get 500 comments in a couple hourse – way too much! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
I’m going to have to figure out how to turn off ping backs. I never understood what they were anyway! I’m so glad that you got your problem understanding control.
Hi Ann – go into your Discussion Settings and uncheck the box that says: “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts.” Hope this helps!
Thank you, I’ll do that!!
Hope that helps!