Friday, October 20, 2006
Retro Spam
I received some new comments to my blog recently, but I only knew of them because of blog alerts by email. At first I thought perhaps they were about Nian's application for a CR1 visa, this because one of the comments was entitled "this may help with your application." I went to my main page, but there were no comments in sight for the last couple of weeks. I searched backward and found the same comment attached twice to an older blog entry about taking the GRE. I then realized the site "applycorner.com," which was attached to the comment, must have Google'd for GRE in blogs and Spammed everyone they found commenting on the GRE or various other applicable college application matters.
Somebody actually had to do some work to get the Spam through. They had to find a relevant article then enter the captua code to leave the comment. Likely there is an army of oversea workers working at slave wages to do this kind of Spamming. Sadly the additional cost of paying someone to manually Spam blogs isn't enough to discourage the practice. Search engine driven Spam attacks are probably here to stay, because even though they cost more than the old Spam-everyone approach, their targeted nature makes it more likely the links will be followed as relevant to the discussion at hand and thus generate income for the Spammers.
It's have been a couple of weeks since I've received a genuine comment, It would be nice to get more, but I do get some and the last one, received on October 10th, proved doubly refreshing as it proved some people evidently do actually go back and read my older blog entries -- it was attached to the June post Now All I Need Is A Giant Baggie...
I haven't been reading many other blogs lately, so I haven't been leaving comments with other blogs. I certainly notice a tick-up in my readership and comments when I'm out prowling the blog lanes and being sociable. I have a couple of sites I discovered earlier when I started blogging; I should stop by and say hi, you'll will find their links on the left under "Friends of BNL."
Here is the point where I tie the two or three main ideas of the post into a witty exit line. Damn... today I fail. I'm also too lazy to PhotoShop (actually Gimp) a Spam Can picture to be dressed up in gaudy 70's garb or poised on the Saturday Night Fever dance floor.
