Spambots - Or, why comment moderation is back on.

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For a long time now, neo-neocon has posted Spambot of The Day when a new or somewhat original example came through her spam filters. Often whimsical, with wonderfully loose language, and sometimes no other apparent purpose than to show that it could be done.

I've gotten these examples on Anatomy of an eBay Transaction... 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...
Clearly, many thanks for the information.
   July 13, 2010 6:28 AM

Paul_In_Houston said...
Although that comment appears appropriate to this post, my site meter (StatCounter) shows no trace of anyone even visiting my blog around the time the comment was put up, let alone actually reading this post.

In fact, that comment would have been far more appropriate to the follow-up posting "An Ode to PayPal...".

So, I have to conclude that it is almost certainly a spam-bot.

I'd love to learn how it accomplishes this; finding a particular post to comment upon and actually doing it without leaving a trace other than the comment itself.

And as for WHY it was done ("What's in it for them?") I suspect the answer may be because they could.
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    July 13, 2010 2:26 PM

Anonymous said...
The excellent and duly answer.
   September 13, 2010 3:47 AM

Anonymous said...
You have quickly thought up such matchless phrase?
   September 13, 2010 11:42 PM

Anonymous said...
In my opinion you are mistaken. I can defend the position. Write to me in PM, we will discuss.
   September 16, 2010 10:41 PM

Beginning today, these are what I'm getting (on Yet again, the Brits know us much better than our own media does.. )...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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    September 23, 2010 11:51 PM

Paul_In_Houston said...
Like other spambots that have visited here, this one left no trace at all on my site meter (StatCounter).

As this one at least provided a URL, I've emailed them, asking how they managed that.

If they simply came here the same way as anyone else, doing nothing special to avoid detection, then I may want to take it up with StatCounter.

In the meantime, I'll leave it up for a while before purging it.

Just a little while; if I'm gonna provide advertising space for someone, I want my cut. :-)
    September 24, 2010 1:09 PM

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    September 24, 2010 4:21 PM

I'm afraid that final one was the last straw. If you want to advertise on my site, we need to negotiate a fee first.

Because of this, I have purged those last three comments and I'm turning comment moderation back on. :(

(And, as I mentioned in my comments before, I would still love to know how they manage an end run around StatCounter.)
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Yet again, the Brits know us much better than our own media does..

Thanks to neo-neocon for Finally: a fair depiction of the Tea Party movement

She simply points to Tea Party insurgents prepare to seize power in 2012
and figures (rightly) that it says it all.

Not feeling bound by such a restriction, I'm gonna quote from it a bit:

Flu can really suck, you know.

Back to square one...

If Stephen King hadn't already described the circumstances (in "Danse Macabre") of how he wrote "The Stand", wherein flu (albeit a souped-up version) was the instrument of the downfall of civilization, I would have guessed his inspiration to be a recent bout of it and thinking "What a miserable way to go!!!".