“anti-spam” spam!

I write this post partly to warn people but also out of amusement!

Like any public blog, I get people adding spam comments occasionally. Most of it is caught by Akismet so it doesn’t bother me but I received some interesting ones today that I thought I’d share.

The comment was:

Hi nice post, i read your blog from time to time but i was wondering something. I also run a blog on a similar topic, but i get 1,000’s of spam comments and emails every day does that happen to you.. Any ideas to stop it? I currently have commenting disabled but i want to turn it back on.. Thanks!

Sounds nice enough doesn’t it? Which is why I want to warn people not to fall for it as it is not a genuine request for help.

There are two main reasons I know it is spam…

1. The email address was nonsense – just random letters typed either side of @ symbol. Someone seriously asking for help would give their contact details
2. I got the exact same message (punctuation, spelling, everything) on a different post and from a different person with a different fake email address but the same IP address and the same URL to be added to their comment.

It amused me because it is appearing to hate what it is – very circular! And that the spammer has no idea of how silly it is to post it twice under different names in the same blog.

So if you get the same request, please delete the comment and don’t click on their links.