Every week, we see the anguishHow do I get user xxxxx blocked from commenting on my blog?
because many people enjoy FaceBook and Twitter, where there is no spam, and no unwanted comments. They think that Blogger comments should be controlled, as social networking like FaceBook and Twitter are controlled.
With FaceBook, each person controls their own Wall, and their own neighbourhood. With Twitter, each person decides exactly who they wish to Follow, and sees tweets from only those folks that they follow. Neither FaceBook or Twitter encourages you to open up your neighbourhood to the world; both allow you to establish each contact, one by one, at your discretion.
With Blogger commenting, you are encouraged to allow anybody - or anybody with a required level of authentication - to comment on your blog. This encourages freedom of speech, and extends your neighbourhood far beyond the walls that you setup with FaceBook and Twitter. Some commenters, and other readers of your blogs, may later become part of your FaceBook and Twitter neighbourhoods - but at their discretion, as well as yours.
With both FaceBook and Twitter, any established account has some implied value, which is a function of the size of its neighbourhood. Nobody can use a FaceBook or Twitter account for persistent spam, because people control their own neighbourhoods. If offended, they can easily discontinue a FaceBook or Twitter contact. There is no real anonymity in either FaceBook or Twitter - each contact there is identified and validated, by its neighbourhood of contacts.
With Blogger, anybody can setup one or more Blogger accounts, for posting comments on any blog that permits comments. A Blogger account has no value, equivalent to a FaceBook or Twitter account. A Blogger account won't be identified, or validated, by its neighbourhood of contacts.
The owner of any blog has a few options, as to what level of anonymity may post comments.Who Can Comment?- Anyone - includes Anonymous Users
- Registered Users - includes OpenID
- Users with Google Accounts
- Only members of this blog
- (For private blogs) Only members and readers of the blog.
Beyond those 5 choices, there is only the Blogger heuristic comment filter, which has to be persistently trained, by each blog owner. You, as the blog owner, moderate either actively or passively. You allow / disallow / tag as "spam" before publishing comments, or you delete / don't delete / tag as "spam" after comments are published. That's the choices that you have, as a blog owner.
You cannot negatively filter comments, by blocking specific individuals. If you were to add a filter for one individual, the owner of the filtered Blogger account could setup another account, and pester you from that account, with impunity. They could even use multiple different accounts, using botted computers, if they wished.
When you publish a Blogger blog and allow commenting on your Blogger blog, you open yourself to the world. For good, or for bad.
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Every day or so, we see reported from concerned bloggers, about unknown content in their blogs.Where did those ads come from? I didn't add them!
orHow do I keep this other blogger from posting porn links in my blog?
As we add content to our blogs, and make them fun, interesting, and shiny, to attract readers, we risk adding undesirable content. This is a constant problem.
The bad guys are out there - and the more fun, interesting, and shiny your blog is, the more it's likely to have readership, reputation, and value.
The more readership, reputation, and value that your blog has, the more attractive it is to the bad guys. And the bad guys have various ways to attack a given blog.
- Malicious Comments
- Malicious Posts
- Malicious Accessories
- Malicious Blog Members
- BlogList / Feed Gadgets
Malicious Comments
One of the easiest way to add third party content to your blog is from allowing comments.
Comments are contributed by people who, at best, you simply do not know. Any content from someone who you do not know can always be malicious, or obnoxious in some way.
Some blog owners will try to identify and block individual commentors. I will continue to insist that anybody who you should fear will not be bothered greatly by anything that you can do here.
You absolutely must moderate comments, or risk having a blog known for hosting malicious links - or worse.
Malicious Posts
Besides comments, posts are a constant concern. If you have a team blog, you have to be able to trust the other members in the blog.
Post moderation, using post editor to publish, isn't an option. Anybody who you make an author can publish what they feel like publishing. You can only moderate posts after they are published, when using post editor.
An alternative to using post editor to publish is Mail-to-Blogger, where contributions are emailed to the blog. If Mail-to-Blogger is setup to publish straight to the blog, and the bad guys figure out your MTB account and password, you'll have malicious content a plenty.
You can moderate before publishing, using Mail-to-Blogger.
Malicious Accessories
Any time that you install third party accessories of any type, you are placing your blog at risk.
Don't be overly paranoid - you have to make your blog interesting to your readers. But do keep the risks in mind.
This is similar to layered security for your computer, which is a related concern here.
Malicious Blog Members
Sometimes, possibly having unwisely installed a third party accessory, the install process may have enabled the addition of an unknown member to the blog. The unwanted content may be added by the attacker, using this unknown blog member.
If none of the above advice offers you an explanation for the existence of unwanted content, check your blog member list.
BlogList / Feed Gadgets
Occasionally, we may Follow a blog where the owner will later decide to try to get more traffic to the blog, and will redirect the blog feed to a cloud of random blogs. If you are Following such a blog, or have such a blog in your BlogList or Feed gadget, you'll see your BlogList or Feed gadget show odd content - and frequent spam.
