Monday 27 August 2018

What On Earth Is The Point Of Spam?

No, I don't mean the pink 'meat' that comes in cans (although that's existence baffles me too) but this stuff:


Stonyground, a regular commenter, recently asked why I have moderation on. Well, this is why. All of these escaped the inbuilt Blogger spam filter and would have been cluttering up the comment section.

And for what end? I thought the point of spam was to mention products for sale, or provide a link for people to click, yer all of these are anonymous accounts with no link back, spouting rubbish. What's the point of them?

10 comments:

Stonyground said...

Now I have my answer, thank you. Spam is usually trying to sell us something, no idea about this stuff though.

Longrider said...

I stopped all that stuff long ago. Wordpress seems to have much better filtering. Haven't had a comment like that for a couple of year at least.

Rational Anarchist said...

In order to find which sites use pre-moderation or spam protection, they put these messages out there that look legit, then see if they have been posted. If you let these ones through, then they come back with the spam that includes links/products/etc.

This way, you can't tell what products or links they are trying to promote, but they can find out if they're likely to get away with spamming on this site.

jack ketch said...

I have always assumed, but don't know, that the 'randoms' were machine testing to find sites without moderation...a list of which could then be sold to those spammers who constantly desire nothing more than to improve your penis size, Julia, or make you irresistible to women.

Barman said...

I see they all have hyperlinks...?

I presume the point of posting is to have those hyperlinks seen on your incredibly popular site and have the Google search engine find and legitimise them...?

Pcar said...

@JuiaM, 26 August 2018 at 06:37
Campaign needed:

Film in landscape on phone - simple 90 degree rotation."

Oh, god yes! Seconded!
https://thylacosmilus.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-progressives-won-this-is-result.html?showComment=1535261856708#c7341239226812670477

Start one on change.org & post here, TW, TN, OOL, AltN...

Andy said...

Back in the early days when it was alt.binary whatever the edgy user groups got hit with hundreds of nonsense replies in an attempt to shut them up. I thought that was the case in your situation, if it is you should be flattered!

Jimbo said...

The blogger moderation took doesn't show it, but most of those will have spamny text and even links in the 'name' or 'email' field. The aim is not for them to be clicked on, but simply so Google indexes them as links. The spammers are trying to game the SEO dir gullible clients and force the linked site up the Google search results. Now because blogger is Google run that won't actually work, they are wise to the trick. But WordPress sites suffer from this all the time.

JuliaM said...

"Spam is usually trying to sell us something..."

The original spam I used to get when I started was. Nothing I'd ever buy, mind you!

"Wordpress seems to have much better filtering."

One day, I'll put aside the time to migrate. Maybe when I retire!

" If you let these ones through, then they come back with the spam that includes links/products/etc."

Ah! That makes a deal of sense. I assume it's bots, rather than actual people?

"...a list of which could then be sold to those spammers who constantly desire nothing more than to improve your penis size, Julia, or make you irresistible to women."

THAT sort of spam only seems to come to my Gmail account!

"I see they all have hyperlinks...?"

No, not always.

JuliaM said...

" I thought that was the case in your situation, if it is you should be flattered!"

There's no shutting me up. ;)

"But WordPress sites suffer from this all the time."

But Longrider never seems to get any, and he's Wordpress?