Spam – do want spam with that?

I’ve been blogging for about 6 months now – usually when I come across something which I think would be good to share. And whilst I hope for the occasional comment, what I truly hadn’t anticipated was the deluge of spam.

Mostly sycophantic, occasionally downright vulgar, I am astonished at their persistence. In the last 10 days alone I’ve had 556 comments, absolutely none of which have any bearing on my blog.

The comments, happily, are swished aside by a very efficient Rottweiler of a programme called Akismet. But as I was sorting through my website today, I thought I’d take a look at just what I was missing. Very little it turned out, but it reinforced an interesting lesson.

In fairness, breadth of the unwanted blurb was astonishing. From lists in Russian, to comments extolling various …er… body enhancing treatments. There were ‘must buy’ acai berry muscle building products, warnings of fatty liver symptoms and free dating sites. Some were random drivel, some blatantly plugging their product with no preamble, but most were rather polite. Clearly insincere, but  aimed at flattering a blog owner. Along the lines of “this is the most awesome blog I’ve ever read, man” or “I have looked everywhere for a website which knows everything, and you have written it very clearly” and “wow this is really cool“. I was not fooled.

But it did occur to me that spammers, like all tricksters I guess, think that casing their pitch in gloopy sycophancy will lead to more results. So reader beware. If someone approaches you with praise, offers and products which seem to be too good to be true, you can bet your bottom dollar that they probably are.