A few insights into Blog comments spam

People have been spamming blog comments for years.  From manual beginnings, people developed spambots to automate the process, which understandably resulted in a huge increase in spam traffic.  In earlier days, the intention was a mixture of attempts to build traffic to legitimate sites (for both manual traffic and search engine optimisation),  and various scams including pump and dump.

Many blogs responded by turning off comments altogether; in my case I've vetted comments before publishing.

In more recent years, the spam comments have become apparently innocuous, and don't even try to link to other web sites.  This left me wondering what was going on, but I found it difficult to find out.

So with my previous post, I set up a honeypot to gather spam comments over time, with the intention of analysing them to understand better what was going on.  This entry will give some limited insights; maybe I will add to it when I know more.  The following is a first pass report on the results.

I posted the honeypot in August 2019, and spambot comments flowed in for about two and a half months, before abruptly stopping.  There's an implication that they're all from the same source - or using the same mechanism.

I analysed about 100 comments through a Natural Language Processing framework.  This is a form of Machine Learning (which is popularly referred to Artificial Intelligence, although I don't think it's an accurate term).  It wasn't able to tell me that much.  Amongst other things, it returned a high positive sentiment score through sentiment analysis.  This was fairly obvious already.  To get past spam vetting systems, the spambots intentionally fed relatively upbeat phrases.  They were mostly quite general comments, either about liking the blog or asking help with their own blog (again, no  links).  But it was possible to tell in the first instance that it was spam simply because there was no specific reference to the subject matter in the blog post.  To make this clear, in the honeypot I requested comments to include a specified word to flag that the commenter had read the post.  Which of course is beyond the capability of automated commenting tools.

The only thing I've really gotten from the NLP system so far is that very frequently the comments are very close variants on each other - in groups of two, three or more.  It's as if someone put together three sentences, made some variants on a few keywords/phrases, and then got the spambot to switch around the words frequently enough so as to specifically avoid getting caught by automated processes that blocked groups of indentical comments.

So it looks like it's an arms race between sets of automated tools, a battle to infuse comments on the one hand, and to deflect them on the other.  What hasn't been answered yet to my satisfaction is why the spambots are still running but are not delivering weblink payloads.  My only guess is as before: that the spambots are being used to pinpoint blogs/news sites that allow unfiltered comments to get through.  My feeling is that there must be more to it than that, so suggestions are welcome.

PS: Will a new post get those spambots started again on this blog?  Let's see.

The Spammer collection

Ever wonder what all the spam comments look like?  Is it worth doing an analysis?

If your answer to both questions is "No!!", then you're a fairly normal person, and not a spambot.

But hey, it's my blog.  So I'm going to gather up a mass of spammer comments below, and maybe someday I'll analyse them, perhaps even find a tool to track down and aggregate the information they give me - for example, the sources from which they indiscriminately yank their random word strings.

Normally I moderate comments and trash the trash, so you have no insight into what goes on.  But this time, I'll let it all through.

If you have a genuine comment to make, you'll need to use the word sphenodont to flag that you've actually read these words - and I'll publish these comments manually.  Good luck!,  and heaven help us all.

24-Aug-2018 Update: It took five and a half days for the spambots to arrive at this post, and there's currently a steady stream, at a range of times.  They mostly hit only the latest post, but there's odd exceptions that target random earlier posts.
Why do they do it?  Spamdexing is given as one explanation - this is aimed at steering search engines to particular web sites, and affecting search engine optimisation.  However, in recent times there's been no attempt to include links or phrases to steer search engines, so I'm still at a bit of a loss.  I welcome an explanation of how these random comments below can be turned to someone's advantage...

Of course Bazza is certainly not a spambot - he graced us with his presence in person a few years ago.  He was quicker off the mark than the bots.  I'll publish his and other real comments here, within the body of post.

bazza said...

I sphenodont really know what this post is about! I don't know what's squamata...
CLICK HERE for Bazza’s powerfully pervasive Blog ‘To Discover Ice’ 

Tuesday, 20 August 2019 at 06:36:00 GMT+10 


03-Sep-2019 Why is it so?  A conjecture:  The lingering question is: why post comments without any useful content.

A fresh comment came in - which I have caught in the slips - that may or may not give some insight:

"Useful Information :
Looking for the Best Digital Marketing Company in V***a [link therein] and H***d affiliate agency in *** INDIA, Digital Marketing in V***a @ p***s.com [decomposed email address therein]"

I had had a thought that the spammers were using spambots to test the waters: are there any websites that allow the comments to get through? - if so, add next-step comments with payloads.  The above is actually the first spam I've seen in a long time that had any payload at all.  It's also the first time I've seen spam from India, which may signal that over time, people in different countries are adjusting methods, moving on.

Evolution and monotremes, spam and off-topic Google searches

This post will discuss monotremes in evolution, but first a diversion to the reason for this topic.

I got a comment submitted from "Izumu":

"Hi Stephen,
I am Izumi from TBS TV, a Japanese TV company. We are intersted in the platypus egg photo you posted on your blog of 19 Mar 2008. I couldn't find your email address and that's why I'm making comment trying to be in touch with you. Could you kindly write me back to xxxxx@nifty.com ? Please don't post my comment since it includes my email address. Thank you very much for your coopereation. Izumi "

I post a reproduction of this comment sans email address, although I was inclined to include it anyway.

I get quite a number of spam comments posted, which is why comments are moderated.  I'm not inclined to reply to this request directly, because:
a) It was off topic;
b) The email address wasn't from an official TBS domain - Nifty is just a Japanese ISP.

Usually I just mark spam as spam.  I don't usually get a comment that's so close to falling either way.


There's a few pictures of platypus eggs on the web.  As it happens, mine is now at the top of Google Images.  It was a bit of a tragedy in some ways, because the actual topic of the post was the evolution of milk, but it gets caught in the wrong net.  If you want to communicate about platypus eggs, talk to someone who's communicating about platypus eggs.

The reason they appear to us to be strange is just a quirk of evolution: they are the last representatives of the earliest types of mammal.  The only egg-laying mammals (protherians) left are the monotremes, two species of echidna (porcupine-like creatures) and one of platypus, all native to Australia/Papua New Guinea.  Yet the first mammals were egg-layers.  Marsupials (metatherians: live but under-developed birth) and then placentals (eutherians: live birth) were a much more recent development, as the technology of birth evolved over tens of millions of years.

The oddness of the platypus may initially be due to their appearance, including webbed feet and a duck-like bill.  The fact that  they're mammals that lay eggs draws people in more.  But they are distinctive for two more reasons: they have poisonous spurs on their ankles (which seem to be for breeding purposes!), and they hunt through muddy water by sensing electrical fields.

The platypus, in evolutionary terms, is not so odd.  Pretty much all these features have evolved separately in other animals.  That's evolution: the time spans involved are so vast that if mutation can produce a lasting feature once, it can do it again.

No, the true oddness of the platypus lies in its survival to a time where most of its features are seen as uncommon.  There's a warning there: the survival of features that do not catch on (radiate) more broadly - in numbers or variety - is more indicative of desparately clinging to a vanishing niche than of evolutionary success.

Top Posts 2010 for this blog

The posts in this blog that got the most hits for last year are as follows:


1.  Evolution: A picture of a platypus egg, in the context of the evolution of milk.  Yet the narrative of egg-laying mammals is more interesting than a mere picture.

2. Science: Some pictures taken from Wikipedia that gave some size perspectives on the planets, their moons, and the various star types.

3. Music: Cancion Mixteca: a haunting Mexican song, and actor Harry Dean Stanton's version.

4. Technology: What does IBM do? - What, you don't know?  Answer: not just hardware, these days.

5. Music: Vigrass and Osborne: forgotten 70s pop music - remembered only by those who sought out this link.

6.  Technology: Type conversion in SQL Server: varchar to real

7.  Tintin: Project O-Light: the intriguing Tintin adventure that never was - or not yet.

8.  Evolution: Tunicates: a giant tube worm, and its relationship to us.

9.  Evolution: Gondwana and New Zealand: NZ's separation from the southern land mass Gondwana - it's not how most people think.  And was there really a terrestrial native New Zealand mammal?

10.  Worldwide gun statistics.  In fact, it was more about the relationship between gun ownership and homicides.  As you'd expect, the more immediate the weapon, the more likely the homicide.

This is actually little different from 2009's greatest hits.  Observations: a) I didn't post much last year; b) Google's page rankings over time entrench winners.

Top post of 2010: mention of a Beach Boys concert.  However, I'd prefer you to look at the one on Sculptures By The Sea 2010, the stupidity of an art prize award to a plagiarism, and Homo Floresiensis as, potentially, australopithecus.

The future of this blog [genetics 000]

It has come to my attention that...
I know I've been a bit slack lately...
There is so much richness in this world that there's never enough time to explore it all, let alone diarise it...

Ideally, I'd write a thought a day; heaven knows there is an abundance of fresh insights to be gleaned from the experiences of each and every day.  On the other hand, there's a putative obligation to pursue the insight to the full extent of its value, else why even start?

So, the world is still turning, new experiences are daily deposited in the bank of life's richness.  Where is the reward in not sharing it?

Time, that is the villain.  It seems to accelerate, leaving me guilty and struggling in its wake.

Not that I've been idle.  But as it stands, the less time I spend commuting, the less I have to devote to absorbing and recording.  (In any case, my commuting time had been taken up with podcasted lectures.)


To date, evolution constitutes the majority of my [tagged] posts.  Not surprising; it's been a fascinating journey - unexpected, and very rewarding.  But I've taken an equally fascinating, equally unexpected turn: to molecular biology and genetics.

Although the confluences could be mapped, this path certainly wasn't planned.  And I'm not a gadfly, turning to a new subject at whim.  In fact, before dipping into evolution, I'd not plunged so deeply into an area of study outside a formal university course.  And I had hitherto treated biology as the distant, neglected cousin of all the sciences, steeped as I had been in mathematics and physics.



A starting point could be: "what is a gene?"  Actually, I have attempted this in the past, with understandably mixed results.  So I felt I should not start the recording process until I'd got that under wraps.  Yet by the time I felt sufficiently confident, I'd come out the other end, and in fact discovered where within this wide area my true temperament and interest lies.

I will not start with the above question - the answer is not sufficiently straightforward.  I will start at the natural starting point: the basics of molecular biology.

It's not dry and uninteresting.  It's a fascinating universe writ small, and it touches on many of my core concerns, including information science, analysis, evolution, mathematics, and pure intrinsic beauty.


I will be trying to construct an engaging, coherent narrative.  Yet I will still take minor excursions into some of my traditional interests: music, film, current events, and science (first up will be a film called The Swimmer).

I even know exactly where this journey is taking me: genomics, wherein lies a universe of challenges - and which is one of the most current, most relevant worlds left to be explored.  For a hint of this, there's a truly inspiring lecture by Eric Lander of MIT, called Genomics (it's available for free on iTunes).  Although its clarity is worthy of the best of the visionary TED lectures, the full richness of its meaning will be far better appreciated with sufficient context.  That's what I'm aiming to provide.

Evolution of knowledge on evolution

I like puzzles. One thing that drew me to the study of evolution was that it is effectively an intricate mesh of puzzles, with some less-than-obvious yet neat solutions.

But I think what keeps me coming back to it is the raft of conceptual challenges, coupled with the desire to place it all in a coherent framework. The logic behind mathematics and physics, for example, is largely straightforward - except at the outer limits (such as relativity, cosmology, quantum physics).

By comparison, evolution is a constant challenge, in a number of ways.

First, deanthropocentrism. To attempt to make sense of the narrative that is evolution, it is necessary to mentally free ourselves from our human frame of reference. Many accept creationism simply because it's hard to conceptualise mutative changes that happen on the scale of millions and billions of years. After all, human history only extends a few thousand years, and modern humans have only existed for a scant hundred thousand years - yet we are the product of those billions of years that came before.

It's not just time that we need to reconceptualise. There's also the other scales at which evolution is working: DNA, and the chemical factories that it sets up in each living cell. Viruses and bacteria, and the contribution their rapid mutations make to other species, and to the overall environment. And the part played by the complex interactions of species at all levels that are competing for living space.


Evolution also holds a number of unexpected surprises: a seemingly unconnected set of principles that come to play in building up the narrative. Convergent evolution. Viral insertions into germlines. Dual functionality for organs. Terraforming bacteria. The relationship between the rate of evolution and solar radiation. The difference between, say, the human eye and the octopus eye.*

Understanding a number of disparate strands in the evolutionary narrative requires a lot of reading. You will find that the same stories come up time after time in explaining principle, yet there are always new stories and new explanations. But not only is it useful to read widely on evolution: it also helps to draw in parallels from other disciplines and experiences, to make sense of new concepts through associativity, drawing similarity with other strands of knowledge.

Readings of Gould, Dawkins et al only hinted to me at the nature of the challenges that awaited. Gould certainly does discuss the need to reconceptualise. But to come from a different discipline that may be steeped in fairly direct logic, to one such as this where the logic is there, but works in often tangential ways, is something that a life-long biologist often does not appreciate enough in communicating to a non-biologist.

Logic is the fundamental basis of evolution, of course. But understanding calls for more: experience, metaphor, imagination. It's easy to grasp the headline explanation of evolution, but the headline alone doesn't draw all the requisite strands together: there is so much that can make a lot more sense if one drills down.

And it is ultimately immensely rewarding to find that the more conceptual barriers are crossed, the simpler and neater the narrative turns out to be.



*If I mention anything here for which you haven't seen adequate explanation yet, let me know: I'm happy to dwell on it :)

What's happening to this blog?

Not much, I'm still going. But over the last couple of months, I've made a few changes.

Ideally, I'd proffer a thought a day: an idea or insight that strikes me as significant. For this, I infuse more than enough information: in particular, from the Sydney Morning Herald, New Scientist (the weekly science news magazine), and ABC Newsradio (incorporation BBC's world service) - plus myriad other sources.

However, my publishing schedule has been somewhat variable over these three years, depending particularly on time availability.

One of the more recent additions is a tag list. Unsurprisingly, evolution, climate change and politics top the list. I have tried to backfill since I started using tags more rigorously, but there's still plenty of posts that need to be adequately tagged. The size of the tag list will inevitably steer the tags from the very specific to the more general.

And since I am trying to overcome a significant income deficit, I added some discreet ads at the end of the post. Not enough to be distracting, I trust.

I have also adopted a weekly schedule to the subjects - another tidyup. This makes the schedule more demanding and thus more fragile, but I'll try to keep it up as follows:
Mondays (published Sundays): Evolution
Tuesdays: sociology (social trends)
Wednesdays: economics/politics
Thursdays: climate change/science
Fridays: technology/IT
Saturdays, Sundays: music, film, literature, miscellaneous.

And most recently, I added a web counter to get some idea of the traffic for this blog. I've been using profile views and comments as a sort of proxy, but they tell little.

I expected a couple of views per day, since I've mentioned this blog to a few friends. But I was surprised to find an average of about 50 unique page views each day (averaging 40 visitors). Which suggests to me people may be coming here one-off via a specific Google search; the comments tend to bear this out. I know what it's like to be a lurker: there's simply not enough time to read everything, let alone interact. But I am asking you to send a comment today, if you can. What made you come to this blog (or what were you searching on)?

Feel free to comment on content, but you don't have to. Reminder that comments here are moderated to prevent spam, so they won't show up until I've clicked through them.


PS: I have to laugh. Having just said the ads were discreet, I looked at this post and found a massive yellow ad for a retailer at the bottom. Cross fingers it won't happen too often. Is it there now?