I don’t think that most people are surprised to read statistics that credit SPAM with producing the majority of email traffic worldwide. And if you write a blog that allows comments, you probably have to continually contend with sifting legitimate comments from the SPAM chaff–even if you have anti-SPAM measures in-place.

I’ve never had a problem recognizing SPAM comments, and I thought that SPAM would be easy for anyone to spot. But I’ve recently visited blogs from long-time communication professionals who have inadvertently approved SPAM comments. These are blogs that moderate comments, so I can’t blame this on anyone but the site moderators.

Granted, most SPAM messages aren’t overtly malicious or dangerous; but like weeds, they can detract from the beauty of your blog. Best to deal with them before they spread.

Here is a screenshot of recent SPAM messages that came to this blog. One of them made it through the Akismet spam blocker plugin, but I quickly spotted it as SPAM and sent it to my SPAM folder to await final deletion. The sender names and links alone reveal these as SPAM messages.

SPAM comments usually promote a product or service, or suggest that you visit a website.

Even a quick look at the sender name and return email address are suspicious. When the return email address is a site that clearly promotes a product or service, the SPAM alarm bells should ring loudly!

My hunch is that the comment moderators on my colleagues’ blogs approved the comments without reviewing them closely. Perhaps they were viewing the comments on a smartphone, where the smaller screen prevented them from seeing the sender’s entire return address and link. Or perhaps they were just in a hurry. Either way, their blogs are now part of the SPAM weed-fest.

If you haven’t visited sitepoint.com before, here are links to two recent columns that show the site’s benefits to non-web developers.

The first is an under-the-hood look at Twitter, and what may be causing the service outages that are frustrating Twitter users. I haven’t read this anywhere else. (I don’t subscribe to many other geek-oriented sites, so I might have missed some. A quick Technorati search didn’t come up with anything better than this article.)

The second article was a rant about the CAPTCHA utility that many website use to keep automated robots from accessing sites. But the CAPTCHA utility can be a pain for legitimate site vistors–especially when it insults those visitors.

Read Reddit’s Flawed CAPTCHA: Adding Insult To Injury for more information. I liked one commentor’s point that insults shouldn’t be part of the messaging in utilities meant to block automated robots. The robots won’t read or comprehend the insults. Only humans, most of whom are potential customers, would understand the insults–and they are not the ones who should be insulted.

Maybe SitePoint will become a new (to you) source for web-oriented information.