Why Even bother??

2008 January 13
by zackhensley

I get about 100+ spam comments every day. Thankfully for Akismet they all get caught, and are not posted on my blog. If they weren’t caught I’d have to turn off comments because there would be no point in filtering them.

Every once in a while I’ll take a look in the “Akismet Caught Spam” folder and find half of the spamed comments were as follows:

____________________________________________________________

My question here is why bother sending me 50 -60 comments like this every day? Is someone really that bored? I could understand if there was a link to a real website, or if they were advertising something. But this has no purpose at all and doesn’t ever make it on my blog, so why waste the energy!?

Just doesn’t compute with me.

from → are you for real, random, rant

6 Responses leave one →
  1. 2008 January 13
    Amanda Beattie permalink

    I get some of those, too. I guess maybe the point is that a URL gets posted with their non-name… And their non-comment is supposed to so intrigue the public that we flock to their site where they will offer to sell us shady discounted pharmaceutical products?

    Yeah. I don’t get it either.

  2. 2008 January 13
    zackhensley permalink

    For real. All of it doesn’t compute in my mind. From a business stand point the amount of effort being put forth doesn’t match the amount gain being made. But who knows, maybe they make a killing!

  3. 2008 January 13
    Amanda Beattie permalink

    I guess if all the effort a guy put into it was to spend an hour hacking together something in his mom’s basement (which is sure what the end product looks like), it wouldn’t take many sales to make it worth his time…

  4. 2008 January 14
    Aaron permalink

    essentially the same spammers which send out real spam send out these too. to try and break spam filters, as they usually adapt to what is recieved. The idea being that it gets less sensitive to somethings and more sensitive to others, letting through some comments which are actual advertisements.

    unfortunately this method works for email systems like google, so probably works for some blogs also.

  5. 2008 January 14
    zackhensley permalink

    @ Aaron

    Dude i saw you at Onething! I was straight bumbed i didn’t get to chat with you! I take it your back home in England now. Well next time maybe eh?

    I didn’t know that. but that actually makes sense why they would send jibberish to break down the securities sensitivity… That actually makes me feel better knowing there is actually thought behind it. I can respect well thought out strategy, though I don’t want them getting through. It’s much better than complete futility!

  6. 2008 January 15
    Christine permalink

    Even though the logical (and surely correct) answer has been given… I’m sticking with my theory: It’s ACTUALLY the Akismet guys themselves who are behind these spam messages. They want to make sure that you are getting plenty of spam for them to filter so that they look important. They just want to be appreciated.

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