Spam

First, there were ads. Then, TV-commercials came. Today? Spam!

We all know about spam - trash e-mail - and we all hate it. The question is, why do we get it? I mean, if we hate spam (because it takes a time to separate it from real mail) we would surely not like the products mentioned in the spam, and then we would not buy anything. Ergo there is no reason for spam in the first place.

Unfortunately for all of us, there are a few out there paying for products because the spam "informed" them about an "awesome" product or service. This is also the reason why I'm getting 8-12 spam-comments per day. If you're wondering why your comments aren't displayed on this blog immediately - it is because I have to hold them in a moderation queue to make sure no spam gets through.

A while back I had another blog (had some free space on another domain before I got this personal one)  set up without a moderation queue or spam filer. What was the result? Devastation. Before I know what hit me, it was too late - I got no less than 650 spam comments during 8 hours.

It seems that comment-spam is not that unusual, and as I understand it comes in three forms. The first one is outright spam i.e. "Come buy this 'awesome' product!", while the two others are far more complex. The second type is the "I like this blog/post/site and I will continue to read it/recommend it to a friend", which can be hard to detect. The third type makes me sad - it's a real user comment with spam in the Name, Email and Website fields (although the email is hidden from readers).

All these types use the name and website to get traffic, whereas only the first type actually says something about the site or product. It seems that some computers are infected and will send another website link than the one intended, it's problematic because they probably don't know that they're doing it.

Spam goes to trash and as for the real comments with bad links - I fix them.