Opinion Forum

The Tsunami of Spam

March 16th, 2011

Comment spam, as opposed to the e-mail spam that pops into your inbox, is the junk that often appears in the comments sections of blogs and other websites that provide access to the public, e.g., newspaper websites. It’s like a tsunami — it comes, and it keeps on coming, inexorably inundating a website.

Websites try to protect themselves in a variety of ways, sometimes using more than one method. Some use CAPTCHA boxes, requiring anyone who wants access to read and type a nonsense word in no known font to keep computers from reading them. Some require moderation of all comments, a very time-consuming process that requires that every comment be read by an administrator before it’s posted. Others use software programs integrated into website software to detect and hold or eliminate spam. One of the best-known and most effective of these programs is Akismet, which is used to protect Opinion Forum.

We get 10 or more spam comments for every one legitimate comment. Akismet very rarely lets a spam comment get on the website, and it virtually never mistakenly flags a real comment as spam. It all works from their system, which “learns” from all users who encounter comment spam.

Some of the commercial comment spam, which is most spam, is just full of commercial links. Some of it has text, either randomly generated words that make no sense at all or attempts to say something that at least appears like a real comment (and may have been machine-translated). In either case, they’re also full of commercial links. Aside from the commercial spam, some of it is just trolls mucking with the world — probably pimply-faced teenagers and twenty-somethings lounging around in their parents’ basements.

I thought you might enjoy some of the text from one of today’s commercial spams:

Are you misery from dissimilar types of nuisance then you may eff improve from buy tramadol? This buy tramadol is an online medicine that supplies tramadol and tramadol is an superior painfulness help penalisation. That agent activity really intimately to remove average to indifferent anguish successfully.

Definition of pain:

The definition of somesthesia is that Somesthesia is an ungracious perception and moved see of weak embody that caused by existent or latent paper blemish. Untune has different rank for admonition sharp, spartan, temperate, lead to change or low. Again somesthesia has assorted types and painfulness occurs contrastive parts of frail body. To imagine around this entity buy tramadol has created and will strain the perfect somaesthesia killer at the patients’ threshold who are unhappy from modify to intermediate somatesthesia.

Both examples of frail embody are as follows:

Joint and Corporate Feeling in degenerative tier:

Many fill who are wretchedness from Genu and Reefer Painfulness in inveterate condition. The venture of this degenerative untune is Arthritis that affects the patients’ nauseate absorbers and leads the grouping to surface prolonged somatesthesia in Joint and Stick Feeling. These types of patients may use buy tramadol in this view.

Hindmost painfulness:

Backward somaesthesia is also a horrible identify of anthropoid upset. Due to this somaesthesia people cannot do their routine apply. There are antithetical causes to create this identify of discompose sports, injuries, accident, scheming work etc. Abide ameliorate from buy tramadol is the straight bleach.

Cervix somaesthesia, Yobbo symptom and Margin somatesthesia in limited healthiness:

Symptom may become in pet, shoulder or rowdy. Sometimes these somatesthesia are in medium condition. This term is real parlous. In this procedure patients should traverse the perfect painfulness help drugs to shift these pains. There are numerous reasons to movement these pains. These causes are occurrence, strains, injuries etc. So patients should select charge of these pains. They may affirm advice from buy tramadol in this information.

Pull effects of surgical anguish:

Sometimes mild disconcert may create due to the indorse personalty of new dealing. In this shape buy tramadol is the assign solvent for the sufferers.

Diabetes movement intrinsic brass pain:

If you are pain from diabetes then you may face varied fasciculus pains. So you moldiness be aware around this emerge.

Whatever professional awards these guys can compete for (there must be one!), this doofus deserves a nomination — and a special place in hell for himself and all his fellow spammers.

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Akismet, comment, commercial, e-mail, internet, spam, troll
Categories: Humor, Life, Media | Comments (3) | Home

3 Responses to “The Tsunami of Spam”

Clarissa | March 16th, 2011 at 1:25 pm

This is truly priceless. I think this is a rant of a demented person rather than spam.

The kind of spam that annoys me a lot is when a) people try to sell me fake college diplomas and b) people try to interest me in purchasing a nice Eastern European bride. As an Eastern European woman with many real diplomas, I feel annoyed that anybody would waste time on such an egregious case of carrying coals to Newcastle.

Tom Carter | March 16th, 2011 at 1:48 pm

I might agree, except for the commercial links that were included in the spam comment. I don’t know whether these things are generated by individuals who get paid on some basis like the number of times they get something posted or whether it’s done by companies somewhere. Much of it is coming from Russian (.ru) and Polish (.pl) domains, I suppose because it gets them out of the reach of law enforcement in other countries.

This is one of those cases where I wish I were a warlock and could throw a curse on these worthless … well, you know what I mean.

Tom Carter | March 17th, 2011 at 3:42 am

This is a small part of the text from another spam today for the same product:

Before you vantage action a upset match have it’s always first that you bonk all the message nearly that consume. This means that you hump to bed the emancipationist active tramadol, which includes all the moral things which tramadol could bring and the bad things….

In happening you love problems with your liver, breadbasket or kidney you should inform that to the theologist that prescribes you this nourishment. …

Well. I’ll have to consult with my theologist to see if my breadbasket is strong enough to hump the emancipationist….