Blog Spam (Was: Telecommuting)

[Ash Berlin]

On 13 Dec 2011, at 14:10, Paul Makepeace wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 13:50, Smylers <Smylers at stripey.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> One my blog got hit with (if 300 counts as a hit) was a series of
> short comments like that but with exact one misspelling consisting of
> a letter transposition. No link associated with it. Quite weird -
> wasn't sure what it was trying to achieve, maybe poisoning
> bayes/cluster filters with broken (but unusual) words so that they'd
> be "learnt" over time as signals for ham.
> 
> Paul
> 

"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained through incompetency."

The other possibilities is some numpty bought an automated tool and forgot to enter the url properly.

-ash