Flattering Spam
As the population continues to become more online savvy, spammers need to get even more creative to get past filters and moderators. My personal favorite approach lately has been the flattering spam. It’s a psychologically potent tack – they’re going straight for the blog writer’s ego, saying things kind enough to make the moderator pause before sending comments directly to the trash.
Some recent examples found on the WebLinc blog include:
My personal thoughts on this material are that it’s well-written, intelligent and easy to understand. I appreciate this kind of useful information, especially when it is this good.
There are usually not many web sites with info like this man! Bookmarked!
Oh my goodness! an incredible post dude.
It goes without saying I also love the design of your website, quite fresh. Cheers.
Of course, the devious links are still there, only now they’re consistently found in the commenters’ websites and email addresses, which allude to things like diet pills, fire arms, school loans, and MP3s. Something else I noticed is that the broken-English language that spam employs is becoming more colloquial (dude), making it a little harder to spot. At least we’re getting noticed, even if it is by bots. Guess we should take it as a compliment.
This post was so well written. I too appreciate you taking the time to share this information. Incredible!
Seriously though, I never even heard of flattering spam before. But I can really see why that would be trouble for a filter. I wonder how Akismet handles flattery on WordPress. It definitely works well for run-of-the-mill spam.
Wasn’t Flattering Spam your nickname in college, Andrew?
This is actually a WordPress blog. Akismet seems to capture about half the spam like this.