Have you noticed that there’s a new and more sophisticated spam that’s out lately? It’s interesting because it’s actually related to the topic in some fashion, to the degree in which you just might leave it alone because it looks like the real thing.
Only it’s not the real thing. You know it for a couple of reasons. One, it’s mostly a one line item, although I did get one that actually had 3 lines strung together. Second, there’s the little squiggly at the end of the message, which I just figured out where it is. Here’s an example:
my grandfather is also a baby boomer and he is also a war veteran~`”
Here’s another one that was actually on a post of mine on writing articles:
sometimes article writing too much time and effort, specially when you are writing lots of stuff~–
Anyway, all of this stuff is spam, and you need to be leery of it. Sometimes it comes with a link in the message, though neither of these did. They do come with some interesting links as the home domain name, though. The first message came from a site that I assume sells USB related items. The second came from something related to male reproductive systems; hey, that’s actually what it said! lol
I’m also starting to see this on a lot of other blogs, and people are responding to this stuff. Yes, it’s tricky. Sometimes it even comes with an image. But let’s be realistic folks If the picture is of a pretty girl but the name says “David”, it’s fake. Also, if the email address and the domain name don’t quite match up, there’s the strong possibility that it’s fake as well. The first one above for the USB stuff was sent from an email address with “brownies” as the domain name. The reproductive system one was sent from something called “kimber.”
I put it out there in case y’all have been receiving the same sort of stuff and either letting it pass or wondering about it just a bit. It’s spam; kill it.
Champion Men’s Mesh Shorts;
click on image
I hate it. But it must work for them, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. I just hope they don’t ruin it for the rest of us, by making Google completely ignore links in blog comments – that would be a problem for do follow blogs.
It’s the reason we have to be vigilant, Klaus, because if we let it go, then that’s exactly what Google will do to us. Man, wouldn’t you just like to round all these folks up and throw icy snowballs at them until they promised never to do it again? lol
The ‘art’ of spamming also evolves Mitch. Like you said, they now are actually topic related. I’ve discovered that these spammers don’t take the time to read your post, but they do take the time to search for other posts from other blogs related to yours and then copy a good comment there and paste it unto yours.
Should you find a suspicious comment, try copying it and pasting it on google. Chances are you are going to find 2 or more word for word copies of the same phrase or comment somewhere else. These, not counting perhaps several others which google have yet to index. 😉
That’s a very good idea, James. I do that in checking to see if my content has been stolen every once in awhile, but I hadn’t thought about it beyond that. Thanks for the suggestion.
Man,
Some of them look so authentic and ‘interest-driven’ like, that I in fact approve them. Many times, I go back and delete them after several days… generally, after seeing the target link that points to affiliate landing pages etc.
It’s very sneaky stuff, Ajith, and I approved the first one I got before I started thinking about it more.
As Klaus said, it must be working to some degree. I see the same Referrers showing up day after day. Some of them never leave a comment; they’re just lurking. It’s creepy.
Actually Charles, they’re not lurking. These are bots that are being sent out looking for topics that relate to the message. If people were really wasting time looking, they wouldn’t be doing it like that.
I agree- why would they go through all the work of spamming if they weren’t getting something out of it.
It’s all about numbers; I wrote a post about spam a while ago when I quoted some stats showing why they do it.
I trashed a pretty girl just the other day. I had a hunch it was spam & I was likely right.
I think you were, Rose. Often the images and the names just don’t add up as well.
Probably I am trashing more than a thousand SPAM messages a day in few of my email accounts, especially for the generic email accounts like webmaster, info, sales. Thats bad, and unfortunately SPAM filters are not really smart.
They’re only as good as they can be, Gordon. I have to say, though, that I’ve been impressed with how Akismet has figured out how to consider many of the messages that I’ve moved to spam as spam, even coming from different users. That’s saving me a lot of time.