Comments and Spam

It truly feels like a Monday, complete with the first significant snow of the season. In the wee hours of the morning here, a comment came into my blog that looked somewhat legitimate. After publishing it to get full access to all the html involved, I decided it was too shady to keep on the blog. Here’s the content of the post:

Social Cubix said...

Comment spamming you can only prevent by configuring your posting software appropriately. There are some technics like image code verification to verify a human is posting, against human postings with inappropriate content helps only an editor review before release. Machine posted spam may increase, if you use well known templates from popular blogging software.

12:21 AM

The html was in the name of the commenter, turning out to be an embedded link: http: // www . ripoffreport . com / r / social-cubix / washington-dc-20036 / social-cubix-undelivered-project-after-more-than-a-year-and-inexistent-communications-on-1097602

This is a complaint filed at a site I’d never heard of, Ripoff Report, which purports to be a consumer advocacy site. It’s layout suggest profit by any means rather than being something done out of altruism. So I’ve been spammed either by them, or more likely by the person who put up the report at the link. For more information about the site and their many legal issues, check out the Wikipedia entry.

Not surprising for me to read accusations of extortion after looking at the site. An “arbitration” service being offered is clearly there to rake in the bucks as is the clean business certification. All is presented in the classic hard sell style that trips multiple warning flags in my opinion, so I’m glad I visited using a virtual machine and TOR.

I’m amazed that thirty companies have paid this site to “clean up” their reputations at a cost of thousands of dollars a month. Looking at posts there, there is rarely any proof posted about the companies or individuals involved. A presumption of guilt is automatic while the cases are presented in impassioned and often incoherent rants.

But back to the comment and the rich irony of its content. Basically the message is a warning about what it really is and how to prevent it coming in! That has to be deliberate, doesn’t it? The use of the name of the company being accused of wrong doing is another way of smearing it. No matter whether or not they are guilty of wrongdoing, this is an extremely underhanded way of attacking their reputation.

Aside from that, I’ve also prevented another spam post that was clearly posted by a human, not a bot. There aren’t a lot of people going to those lengths, but I’ve read stories about people hired for miniscule amounts of money to do this as part of work at home scams. Where there’s money to be had, every way to spam is used.