I receive a lot of spam on this blog—I’m sure everyone does—and Akismet catches most of it. But sometimes I like to go back and look at some of the spam comments out of curiosity. I received this one just last week:
Yooo..
I kno it has nothing to do with what you wrote, but have you ever heard of (ringtone site URL). They seems to promise free ringtones
PS. Dont be an ass, this is NOT spam ;)
It amazes me that people think they can get away with this type of crap. First of all, the spammer himself doesn’t appear to possess a high school education, as he cannot formulate a complete sentence. Secondly, he thinks that I will allow his comment to remain on my blog if he tells me not to be an ass.
I think we all can identify the ass is in this particular correspondence.
It got me thinking, though, about the effectiveness of spam campaigns. I rarely even bother to read something that looks like spam, and the spammers make it easy by branding themselves in everything they write: poor grammar, incorrect spelling, long URLs, claims of grandeur. Wouldn’t it be more effective to disguise spam by writing eloquently?
For example, if I wanted a link back to this web site, I could just find a blog similar to my own and leave a thoughtful comment, followed by a signature with my URL. Very simple. Technically I’m leaving the comment just to get the link, but since I’ve provided something useful it doesn’t appear that way.
It’s like those Nigerian scams. I still get at least one e-mail per week from someone who claims to be the executor of an estate totaling millions of dollars, asking if I will be the beneficiary. Don’t they realize that most of us are on to their game? Anyone who responds to such an e-mail has been living in a cave for the last five years.
I did receive a new spin on the same story a few weeks ago. The sender claimed to be an Iraqi war veteran whose legs were lost in enemy fire and who had found a cache of money in Iraq and wanted to smuggle it back into the States. Transparent, but at least original.
