JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

I’ve had an intense week (more later) and have had a difficult time keeping up with the spammers. So as a temporary stop-gap measure, the comments on this blog have been closed. My apologies. I hope to open them again this weekend. In the meantime, please email me: harrowme AT yahoo.com

Speaking of spammers, Suw Charman noted and blasted a most awful version of spam:

Sadly, it turns out that, after quite a bit of phoning and checking and ferreting out facts, this is actually exactly what it appears to be – marketers writing fake comments from a fictional character purporting to be supportive of someone going through a real, emotionally stressful time.

While I haven’t yet received comments from a fictional character in a viral marketing campaign – or at least I’m not aware of it – I have been receiving comments that appear authentic but are fake. Spam is becoming more subtle. I’ve received comments that must have been written by a human, specific and relevant to the particular post, but the link left by the writer was an ad. For example, I was upset to receive a comment on my post for the emergency identification program for car seats known as WHALE. The commenter claimed to have liked the WHALE program to the point of creating a web site with a url that sounded related to it. However, a quick visit revealed that it was someone’s business web site. Ick! (I deleted it, to remove the Google juice.) Also, while reading through another blog I found a comment that appeared to be from a spammer yet seemed sympathetic and supportive of a difficult situation. On behalf of my fellow blogger, I was disturbed.

The V$%gra spam was one problem, but this is another. I was annoyed to be bombarded by comments advertising drugs and p@rn. However, these spammers who disguise themselves with false identity and fake empathy will receive only disgust and disdain in return. As Suw wrote: This time round, though, the marketers have reached a new and despicable low.

Again, my apologies.