11 Sep 2010

Sophisticated Spammers

All Posts 8 Comments

Just a quick note, Free Advice has been getting blitzed by spammers in the comments lately. They used to be really easy for me to distinguish from real comments, because they would say stuff like:

johnny decided that it would be pugnacious for him to elevate the rainbow ugg boots

But today I got hit with about 15 that had designer boots or whatever as URLs, so they were clearly spam, but yet the actual comments sounded very well written. Not only that, but they were on point for the specific post!

But then I realized that they were just quoting excerpts from either my post, or somebody else’s previous comment on the post.

Anyway, my point in bringing this up is that if it looks to you like I’ve deleted your comment, it’s probably an accident, so feel free to email me or re-submit. I have only intentionally deleted about 5 comments on this blog, ever.

8 Responses to “Sophisticated Spammers”

  1. zebra man says:

    johnny decided that it would be pugnacious for him to elevate the rainbow ugg boots

  2. Libertarian says:

    I understand your intentions, Robert, you want to keep your site clean and relevant. But if it makes you feel any better, these fools who leave completely irrelevant anchors on your site are actually hurting their search engine rankings.

    They don’t realize this. They are bad at SEO. Haha to them.

  3. Aristos says:

    zebra man stole my joke.

  4. StraT says:

    Install a CAPTCHA code, they are a slight inconvenience for the commenter, but will save you having to waste your time.

  5. Aristos says:

    Since you posted nothing on religion today, let me ask this. Why, if God is so clear on “thou shall not kill” do so many kill in God’s name? It seems that Christianity has evolved but Islam is trapped in the middle ages. What’s to account for this?

    • bobmurphy says:

      I actually have another topic for today, Aristos, but my quick answer to this issue is that the Israelites certainly killed a lot of people, even babies, after receiving the Ten Commandments. So I don’t think we can be too judgmental about Islam on that score alone.

  6. Matt Flipago says:

    When did Christianity evolve past killing in God’s name, there are certainly a lot Christians who think we are in a Holy War, same with Muslims.

  7. Robert Wenzel says:

    Gee, I’m looking for some of those boots. Do you still have the link, by any chance?