Almost two months ago, I wrote about the comment spam on this blog and what I was going to do about it. I am pleased to say that after strictly applying my anti-spam regimen for a couple of weeks, the spam has dwindled to a point to where it takes up very little of my time.
There is one little amusing exception. I have noticed the appearance of what I call flattery spam. This is a variant of comment spam which looks like innocent praise. It often has comments like, “great blog!”, “keep up the good work” etc. Generic compliments which rarely refer to any specifics about my blog or the parent post. The trick is that the commenter’s hyperlinked name goes to a URL which promotes the spammer’s client.
It’s a shrewd tactic. I have to admit that the first couple of instances slipped by my watch. I think it’s normal for people to be less suspicious of praise. After all, most people would like to think that praise is genuine.
I have allowed this one post to be spammed by flatterers (excepting a few genuine comments) just for the sake of providing an example. It’s an odd post for them to spam. Not really very topical or of general interest. Now that I’m aware of this spam variant, the rest of my blog is off limits to flattery.
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