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Google Plus has a massive spam problem

Remember Google Plus? Google's answer to Facebook that did not really meet the company's expectation even after forcing most sites and websites to integrate it in their sites?

I use Google Plus only to post links to new articles that I write here on Ghacks, but not for anything else. I have done this ever since Google Plus was introduced by Google, and got the odd comment underneath posted links occasionally.

Spam was never a big issue on the site until recently. I started to receive notifications about new comments some weeks ago that were all spam.

It was all about "videos of sexy girls", "making money by staying at home", and other posts with links designed to get users to click on those links. I never clicked on these links, and won't. I don't know what happens when you click on these links. Are web pages with lots of ads opened, with popups and popunders? Or will you run into something that is even worse? Drive by downloads, phishing, pages that exploit vulnerabilities to turn your devices into botnets?

google plus spam

The comments use similar syntax and formats all the time, and Google seems incapable of identifying the bulk of them.

While Google Plus' spam filter seems to flag some of them automatically, the bulk of spam comments slip through the cracks and appear on Ghack's Google Plus page.

Any Google Plus user can report comments, but it is unclear what happens afterwards. If you are the admin of a page, you get options to delete comments, or to "delete, report, and block" them instead.

I started to use the "delete, report, and block" option ever since the first spam comments started to appear on the Google Plus page, but nothing has really changed since then.

New spam comments appear on a regular basis, and while some get flagged automatically, many don't. Since I don't want spam comments underneath my articles, or anywhere else, I have used the option for any spam comment ever since the epidemic started.

It is clear that Google Plus is not Google's top priority project, and while Google does not kick it to the curb just yet, it seems likely that Google Plus' days are numbered. For now though, Google needs to invest resources in getting the spam epidemic under control.

Now You: Do you use Google Plus?

 

This article was first seen on ComTek's "TekBits" Technology News

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