"Nice Blog" Spam Is Not Random Garbage

Some time ago, I discovered an odd type of comment spam, which I termed "Nice Blog" spam.

Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

This spam, from what I can tell, has been published by the millions, in various blog comments.

It's likely that this particular spam is being published as a very imaginative form of email address mining. The phrasing started out almost identical to the above example - but recently became rather imaginatively worded.

All that the spammer has to do is publish a "nice blog" spam comment, against a typical Blogger blog post, and select the option to "Send me replies".

Any comments published later against that post, and including the commenters actual email address, would be delivered directly to the spammers inbox. Knowing the email address - and the blog URL (how many comments do not include a link to a blog?) - the hacker would go straight to work.

Later, we would see forum reports.

I can't control my blog, any more - and somebody has filled it with spam!

This was a direct result of the former blog owner, having left a comment on somebody else's blog.

By eliminating our email addresses from our comments, Google is helping to protect our accounts and blogs, while letting us continue to comment on each others blogs - and to discourage one type of unnecessary spam from our blogs.

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