Diaries in non-English
Mon Sep 19 2011

Hi guys,
     I just need to make a quick comment to all who are helping with the spam diary removal effort, after a small accident today. I know this didn't happen on purpose and is purely a slip but I'm keen to try to ensure we don't have any false positives so here's a little of how I decide if a diary is a spam diary or not;

The biggest clue is in the customization. Spam diaries almost invariably have ZERO customization (one bonus to a convoluted customizer that takes time to learn, spammers don't spend time)

Age of diary. Spam diaries are all relatively new and with few entries. If there are a number of entries, many will be on the same day.

Most spam diaries appear to be in English. DD has a high percentage of HongKong diarists who write in Chinese, these are not necessarily spammers.

Spam diaries often have names that just look out of place, either a collection of just letters and numbers or FirstLastname/FirstLastNameXX.

Please have a look around the diary before committing it as a spammer unless you can honestly see from the first entry screen that it's definitely a spammer. As I said, at this point in time, the biggest giveaway is the lack of customization. (Not that all non-customized diaries are spam, they might just be new - then you need to look at content too :-))

Anyway, no lasting damage done, I restored the accidental spam deletion and everyone should be happy again :-)

3 Comments
  • From:
    ThyVictoria (Legacy)
    On:
    Wed Sep 21 2011
    Another thing I noticed, a lot of them were advertising with links in them for products throughout, the spam ones that is, its been nice and clean on DD the last two days with the handfull already removed. :)
  • From:
    FutureCat (Legacy)
    On:
    Tue Nov 15 2011
    (Sorry for posting this here - the support link isn't working.)

    I've just had a very suspicious comment on a diary entry, purporting to be from you (but obviously not) asking me to donate to DearDiary. I doubt any of the regulars here would be fooled by it, but just in case you might want to make some sort of announcement that you're not soliciting donations via comments, and that it's a scam.

    The scammer attempted to provide paypal buttons, which of course didn't work in a comment, so there's nothing for anyone to click on at the moment, but they might get more inventive once they realise that won't work.

    I've left the comment up at http://www.deardiary.net/cgi-bin/viewer.pl?diary=128913&entry=1321315200&comments=on
  • From:
    FutureCat (Legacy)
    On:
    Tue Nov 15 2011
    The note on the comment bar is a good idea, but it only shows up for me when I'm not logged in?