Spam

It is not straightforward to leave comments on my blog. I know that, as a few people have told me that they have given up in frustration. I probably should fix it; but I won't. The reason is that I would get too many spam messages, and then I would have to work out a way to filter them out.

A recent post in Language log (here) mentioned the fact that they had just reached 1 million spam messages, and some of these messages can be quite sophisticated, at first sight seeming to come from people who appreciate the blog, such as:

Finally, an issue that I am passionate about. I have looked for information of this caliber for the last several hours. Your site is greatly appreciated.

and:

I had to tell you this is a really great website, wonderful theme and it makes a change to see such a great page.

Fortunately, I haven't had too many of those, though someone did leave about ten links to a translation service throughout the comments section of my blog, which was really irritating as it took me a while to delete all of them. I hope you can see why I don't make it easier to leave comments.

The worst I get is a regular email message from someone. (The sender changes, but the link is the same, which is why it is hard for me to block.) It goes something like this (with the link removed, for obvious reasons):

Hi David,

We would love to share with you an article that we just posted on our own blog! .... [It] would be an interesting story for your readers to check out and discuss on your blog.

Either way, I hope you continue putting out great content through your blog. It has been a sincere pleasure to read.

Thanks

Note that there is no indication that the sender has actually read my blog. I have received this message, or something similar, about six or seven times now. Maybe I should hide my email address.