Friday, December 7, 2012

More Anonymous Messages

photo copied from
justjoan.joanginsberg.com
I've spoken before about the anonymous comments I get on my blog when the controls are turned off to allow anyone to post a comment here without having to use a capcha code to sign in.  Here's what I had to say on the subject back in March.  These unusual messages continue to appear in my mailbox (although, strangely, many of them aren't actually visible on my blog) but lately they've gotten even more bizarre.  Or maybe "disturbing" is the word I should be using.

Most often, it's a relatively message, often containing compliments about my blog but using somewhat gabbled language, such as:  "I don't even know how I ended up here, however I believed this post used to be great. I don't recognize who you are however definitely you are going to a famous blogger if you happen to aren't already. Cheers!", followed by a link that reads "discount Hermes bags" or "silk sari".  Sometimes I almost want to click on the link, just to see where it takes me but of course, we computer users are constantly reminded NOT to click on links in emails from people we don't know.  That's one way for viruses to attack your computer and I certainly don't want that!

But recently, I've noticed the links are getting a little more ... disturbing.  For example, one I got this week said this:  "Wow, fantastic blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your website is excellent, as well as the content!"  Nice message, right?  Until you notice that the next line says:  "also visit my webpage:  nude*party*girls."  Whaaattt??

Another said:  "Hey are you using Wordpress for your blog platform? I'm new to the blog world but I'm trying to get started and create my own.  Do you require any html coding knowledge to make your own blog? Any help would be greatly appreciated!", followed by a link for "teen p*rn".  (I've added the asterisks because God forbid someone should link to this blog post when they do a Google search using these words!)

Who sends these messages and, more importantly, why??  I always mark these comments as spam and hopefully Blogger is somehow blocking them but still, it's a bit disturbing, isn't it? 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blech. Who needs that. Ick. Go back to using captcha.

MaryL said...

Sadly, there are are people out there that write programs with the sole purpose of adding links to their sometimes commercial websites or more criminal websites by posting SPAM comments to blogs. Links to their sites have two purposes. First they want you to click on them (so they are using this as a sort of advertising) and second links to their site from other sites improves their search ranking.

I am guessing that the reason for the weird wording is that for many of these people English is not their first language and what you are seeing is probably a sentence badly written in another language and then run through google-translate.

The more blog subscribers you have, the more you will be a target of SPAM, so definitely do everything you can to block these nefarious electronically generated comments.