Blog Spam (Was: Telecommuting)

[Smylers]

Nicholas Clark writes:

> I was also amused by the (current) second comment, which is actually
> spam:
> 
>     Thanks for taking the time to discuss about this, I feel strongly
>     about it and love learning more on this topic. If possible, would
>     you mind updating your blog with more information? It is extremely
>     helpful for me.
> 
> followed by a link to a completely unrelated e-commerce site.

Yeah, blog spammers seem to have a battery of anodyne comments, with
gushing so vague it could reasonably apply to information on a wide
range of subjects.

But unfortunately (for the spammers), not quite all subjects. It can be
quite funny when they so badly miss. Here's one I recently saw:

  Thank you for the blog post. Jones and I have been saving for a new
  e-book on this issue and your blog post has made all of us to save
  money. Your thoughts really answered all our issues. In fact, more
  than what we had thought of prior to when we came across your great
  blog. I no longer have doubts including a troubled mind because you
  have really attended to our own needs in this post. Thanks my website
  is on cheap family vacations.

That was submitted my sister's blog giving news to family and friends
about her new 11-week-early twins -- who I'm pretty sure haven't had any
e-books written about them in the first fortnight of their lives ...

In practice on that blog the heuristic for identifying spammers has been
simple: all of the spammers have provided a URL with their comment,
whereas none of the actual friends and family have left the URL field
empty (except for a few who've misinterpreted what that field's for and
dutifully typed the blog's own URL in there). Obviously that isn't going
to work for more technical audiences, but it's scarily successful for
this one.

Cheers

Smylers