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Comment Filtering, And Spam Content, Is Becoming Progressively More Personal

The neverending process of training the comment spam filters, continues. Every month, we see reports from unhappy blog owners, who claim that the filters are not stopping the spam - and they are still having to moderate it. But, if we look at the reports more closely, we see good news.

The good news, here, is two fold:
  1. Every month, we see progressively less reports of spam.
  2. We occasionally see evidence that the spam, that does get through the filters, is becoming more unique to each blog.

With progressively less spam being reported, we see that the spammers are becoming less successful overall, in getting spam through the filters. With more personalised spam being reported, we see that the spammers are having to work harder, to get any spam even moderated. And hopefully, any spam that does get into the "Awaiting Moderation" queue is being quickly dispatched to the "Spam" queue, to be fed back into the filters and provide more training.

The filters will continually learn progressively more personal spam, as the more personal spam is reported by fewer blog owners. Over time, the more personal spam content, though varying from blog to blog, can be more easily recognised in patterns. And the spammers, who are thoughtful enough to include links to their blogs, will find themselves in the forums, doing the Blogger 4 Step "Please, unlock my blog!" dance.

It's working, folks!

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