Have you ever felt as if you were being shadowed? I recently felt this way when a strange url began appearing next to comments I’d made on several blogs I’d visited.

Image Courtesy of Terri Webster Schrandt

I thought my computer had contracted malware, a virus, or worse. But a lovely Happiness Engineer at WP told me it was a link for visitors to rate either comments or blog posts. The url is associated with Polldaddy, a service of WP’s parent company, Automattic.

And the culprit is:

https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js

If you’re seeing this url appear next to comments on your blog, it’s because the Ratings feature is activated. To disable it, go to Settings > Ratings > Comments in your WP admin panel, and uncheck the box next to ‘Show Ratings on’ Comments.

If you already have this feature disabled on your blog, but the url shows on comments you’ve made on others’ blogs, it’s because…