spam

Spam is very tiresome, and of late the sheer amount of comment spam each new post has received has had me take a rather hard line. The onus is on you, dear reader, to prove you’re actually commenting and not looking to trick readers (all one and a half of them) into following a link to your attempt at a sale. And why? Well, today I caught this rather half-arsed attempt:

I do {like|enjoy|love} the {way|manner in which} you have {framed|presented} {this|this particular|this specific} {issue|concern|problem|matter|challenge|difficulty|situation} {and|plus} it {does|really does|does indeed} {give|provide|offer|supply|pr…

A lot of of what you point out is astonishingly accurate and it makes me ponder why I had not looked at this with this light previously. This particular article truly did switch the light on for me as far as this particular subject matter goes. However…

And looking at that, especially the first part in bold (not my emphasis, by the way, that’s how it originally was) I think, wow, so it’s apparently true, there are people who trawl the internet looking for opportunities to leave apparently genuine but quite meaningless comments in the vain hope of attracting eyeballs to their sales pitches. And presumably they get paid for it. And apparently they’re even supplied with templates to manipulate as each attempted comment may require. I wish I could say, “Incredible!”, but sadly, no, it is far too credible.

Just thought I’d put this out there cos it was interesting to see part of the template and in the off chance it may help somebody…

About the Author

wangbo

A Kiwi teaching English to oil workers in Beijing, studying Chinese in my spare time, married to a beautiful Beijing lass, consuming vast quantities of green tea (usually Xihu Longjing/西湖龙井, if that means anything to you), eating good food (except for when I cook), missing good Kiwi ale, breathing smog, generally living as best I can outside Godzone and having a good time of it.

3 thoughts on “spam

  1. If you are using WordPress, make sure your Akismet is activated, or use Captcha on your comment box to deter spam.

    SolveMedia Type-IN is another plugin that works flawlessly in stopping spam.

  2. Akismet is working. That’s where 99% of the spam goes. It bugs me because the occasional genuine comment gets caught up in the net. Captcha’s not going to help much considering the apparent template posted above suggesting real people are doing this for money as well as the usual spambots.

    And nothing works flawlessly.

  3. yes, they are real people but using a script to be able to insert a comment.

    on the other side, our blogs or sites still need human intervention just like you’ve mentioned, to filter the real comment among the spam caught by Akismet

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