It has been disheartening to discover that blogs are just as big a target for spammers as email. When we got to the airport in San Francisco, I eagerly checked my blog for new comments and found there were four – all spam. So far, the spam seems to fall into one of two categories. The first is advertising, usually for some blog related application. MAKE A GUARANTEED $1000/MO ON YOUR BLOG USING PRODUCT X!!! The wording often borders on insulting, as if I must be a total idiot for not buying/using Product X. The second category is more insidious. It consists of a fairly generic comment – “This is really interesting information” – accompanied by a link to some website. In one case it was an Australian escort company.
Apparently there is a large number of people who make money by autoblogging. They post fairly generic or re-used content on hundreds of blogsites and make money by generating a high volume of click-throughs to other sites that pay them some small amount for each person they bring in. I’m probably not explaining it very accurately because I have no interest in understanding how any of it works. I write these posts for myself and a very small audience of friends and family that have some interest in what I’m writing about.
I value real comments highly. Right now the spam comments I’ve received actually outnumber the real ones. I have the site configured so that the first time a reader comments it requires my approval before it shows up on the site. Any subsequent comments from the same person (using the same screen name) will post immediately. So the spam will never show up on the site. If I start getting a large number of spam comments I may need to do something more automated, but right now it’s manageable. So please, take the time to comment on any post that strikes a chord with you. I will be happy if my real comments start outnumbering the spam ones.
Here are two more photos from our trip to Sonoma. I like the contrast between the decay of the dock and the growth represented by the flowers.
