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Dealing with spam
Dealing with spam
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Written by Disqus
Updated over a week ago

Disqus uses its own anti-spam software to smartly combat comment spam. It was designed to learn over time and becomes increasingly accurate with your moderation activity. Spammers are a prolific bunch, and thus there is always some chance that newer techniques may initially get past the anti-spam. These are tips on how to reduce or altogether eliminate spam.

Learn about the latest anti-spam improvements Disqus has made for millions of publishers.

Mark spam

Be sure to mark comments as spam if they are indeed spam. However, be careful not to mark non-spam comments, even if the comments are abusive, offensive, or just plain disagreeable. Marking non-spam comments as spam pollutes the data that Disqus collects and results in less accurate anti-spam detection.

You may mark comments as spam from the Moderation panel, the comment thread itself, and from email notifications.

Pre-moderation

You may choose to pre-moderate all comments posted on your site. All comments, spam or not, will require moderator approval before being published for others to see. Another option you may want to try is pre-moderating all links in comments. To view and change moderation settings, head to Disqus Admin > Community > Community Rules.
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If you are on a Pro or Business subscription, you also have the option of using our "New Commenter" Pre-moderation. This will send comments to Pending for accounts that are new to your site, for a duration of your choosing. This includes brand new accounts as well as older accounts that have not posted to your site before, but your returning commenters will not be affected. This is an effective tool for catching spam and ensuring that new commenters are vetted.
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Report Spam to Disqus

We appreciate reports of spam accounts that aren't getting caught by the automatic spam filter. To report a spammer, see User Flagging.

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