I’ve been getting a lot of rave comments on my blog posts recently. Consider this one I got today: “Congratulations for that marvelous blog post! I found your post very interesting, I think you are a great author. I will make sure to bookmark your blog and will come back quite soon to your blog. Keep up your brilliant work, I hope you will have a great day!”
But that wasn’t all. There were dozens very similar in theme. They all just loved my blog posts. Loved them! They definitely were going to return to my site and/or bookmark the page! They hoped I would continue the excellent work!
Odd, I thought, that none of them actually mentioned the subject of the blog they were raving about. And then there were some that, though they really were trying to be complimentary, got a little tongue-tied. Maybe they found my rare gift for expression a little intimidating, and who can blame them? Consider the sweet intent of this poster, who was clearly overcome with awe: “thanks to your ideas , i¡¯d adore to adhere to your weblog as usually as i can.possess a good day.”
Just reading that put me in possession of a very good day indeed!
Until, I noticed something odd. All these comments were posted by people with screen names such as “moviesforfree” or “Viagranoquestionsasked” or “healthandskinnyfast!”
Ok. Now I get it. Really quite clever: To a spammer, everything is just another opportunity to throw trash on someone’s lawn, to scatter their message like a maple tree scatters its annoying tons of helicopter seeds. Comments on websites were just another free billboard.
Here’s the clever part: To avoid spam, most bloggers have to approve comments before they go up on the site. So instead of sending a comment that says, “Get Viagra through the internet at discount rates!” — obvious spam, wouldn’t be approved — they imbed their true message in their return address, send some automated rave about the blog, then sit back and let the ego of the blogger do the rest.
(Of course in some cases, being from, say, Nigeria, they first must run their generic compliment through an online translator, which accounts for my possession of a good day.)
From now on, I think I’ll check my spam filter as usually as I can.
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