One of the downsides of running a website (or 5) with comments enabled is that bots leave spam messages. The goal of the spammers is to leave something that might look enough like a regular comment to get through, and then once approved, to spam you at will (most sites have default if the user had a comment approved earlier, future comments get pre-approved — I block this feature and approve everything manually). One way to control spam is through plugins, and I do have several anti-bots that take the suspected spam and move it to a spam folder, just like most online email programs do. But I also review the spam folder just in case a legitimate message got through.

That wouldn’t normally sound like fun, but it is. There are some that come through as “great blog, love it, blah blah blah” and then say “here’s my site, check it out” (I don’t, obviously). But the approach up front is often intriguing:

You have packing, either mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes or both, rolls, sweetened cranberry sauce and then it’s topped off with pumpkin pie.

My ѕpouse and ӏ absolutеly lօve youг blog and find a lot of your post’s to be what precisely I’m looking for. Does one offer guest ѡгiters to write content to suіt your needs? I wouldn’t mind publishing a post or elaboгating on a few of the subјects you write related to here. Again, awesome bloɡ!

What i don’t realize is in truth how you are no longer really much more smartly-liked than you might be now. You are so intelligent. You understand therefore significantly with regards to this topic, produced me personally imagine it from so many various angles. Its like women and men don’t seem to be fascinated except it is something to do with Girl gaga! Your individual stuffs great. At all times handle it up!

Often they will do it as a question that looks and feels like a legitimate question from a user:

I do not know if it’s just me or if perhaps everybody else encountering problems with your blog. It appears as if some of the text in your posts are running off the screen. Can somebody else please provide feedback and let me know if this is happening to them too? This could be a issue with my web browser because I’ve had this happen before. Thanks

And while some probably approve it, if you look at the spot where they can put their email address or website in the comment field, it’s a very obvious spam title like “*** SATISFY YOUR WOMAN ***”. Caught by their own desire to spam.

Some are text that are legitimate sentences but have nothing to do with anything:

This involves vacuuming off the dust which may deposit in crevices. You need to initial use white wine to assist dilute a red wine stain. Stay Away From Overused Language ‘ Be Original: Being ‘down-to-earth’ may be great, but do not mention it. School uniforms can be kept together, while work slacks must be in another place. You do not have to live with the blots and ground-in dirt on your carpeting.

Others are WTF moments:

WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching for skin issue.

It must be the key words I use like “skin”, “dermatology”, “treatment” when writing about HR or something computer-ish that drove them to me! 🙂

Others are just row after row of links to spam sites. But my all time favorite is the person who hasn’t configured a one-stop SPAM solution that says things like:

I really {like | love} your {site | blog | post | article | website}. You are very {smart | creative | well-regarded | intelligent | good at writing}.

For those, I actually am serious about them being my favorite…the comments are about 2 pages long, and are basically a form letter-style spam that us pretty well done. Highly generic, decently written, and obviously sold as a turn-key spam solution but the person buying it and implementing it is so stupid that they haven’t bothered to tailor it properly so it shows all the fields rather than the properly generated message the originator intended. In addition, the seller obviously intended for them to use one or two of the paragraphs, but instead the stupid newbie spammer has used 10-15 paragraphs. An excel spreadsheet with a random number generator would do just as good a job, and I’m almost tempted to program one to see if it can generate text for things like thank you posts, PFOs, etc. just to try it. It’s an interesting program solution but they did a good job in the design, even if the implementers are two bricks shy of a full wheelbarrow.

I await new spam, but in the interim, I have useful warnings like the following:

Hi there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found that it’s really informative. I’m going to watch out for brussels. I’ll appreciate if you continue this in future. Many people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!

Watch out for brussels? Thanks for the warning! 🙂