The all new vanity spam

Askimet generally does an excellent job in managing spam on WordPress blogs. A check in the comments section of the WordPress dashboard reveals the numbers and frankly disturbing content sent by the automated spambots.

However, vanity spam is making a return, but with a difference. Regular readers will recall a previous piece on vanity spam:

seemingly complimentary comments, such as ‘Wow… true insight. I didn’t know that… thank you for that.’ At first glance, these seem harmless, if a little naive, and worthy additions to the page.

This form of spam had largely gone away thanks to improvements in Askimet’s algorithm, but it has made a rather strange return of late. The wave of spam coincided with posting TechnoCloud’s URL on Twitter and the seemingly complimentary comments returned, but this time only included a generic URL, such as google.com.

So, what is the point of the spam, given it has no links back to the spammer’s site? My theory is that these are tests to see what gets through Askimet’s filters and that once these tests are complete the web links will return.

Sadly, like death and taxes, spam will always find a way.