spam

Hmmm…Might THIS Stem The Ethics Alarms Traffic Slump?

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

ink tonersI received this e-mail today. If I were Ken White at Popehat, I would deliver an extended faux discourse on ponies, but in this case the message itself suffices:

Hi Jack,

My name is Stephanie Song. I am a freelance writer. I was wondering if you would be interested in allowing me to write a unique article for ethicsalarms.com? I’m working to get myself established in the industry. All I would ask is for a very brief About the Author section at the end of the article that has a single link in it to my site at InkTonerStore.com.

If you check our blog you’ll see that I am very focused on high quality content. Although our blog focuses on ink toners, I can write on any topic.

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Hero: The Lone Juror, Adam Sirois

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Juror 11

Commenter Penn posted a nuanced take on Adam Sirois’s dilemma. It would have been a COTD yesterday, but for some reason WordPress has decided to spam all of Penn’s comments of late, for no reason that I can detect. (I can only discourage commenters I ban by repeatedly spamming them until they go away.) If anyone else has a disappearing comment, e-mail me quick, and I can usually find it. I’m sorry: I swear, it’s not me!

One point before I turn the blog over to Penn. His first comment is about that photo, much criticized, of the lone juror raising his hand in the press conference and “smirking” or looking”sheepish,” or “smug.” I liked Ann Althouse’s take on that:

“The photographers must have taken thousands of pictures of Sirois’s face, and the newspaper editors have chosen one, one that supports the “smirking… sheepishly” characterization. If he “looks like a smug little prick” to you, that’s because the editors decided to help you think that and because the man just had an 18-day experience and was the kind of person who could stand up for his beliefs in a group setting for more than 2 weeks. Most people would cave and go along to get along. These people are much more likely to have a pleasant, unremarkable face.”

Now here is Penn’s spam-rescued Comment of the Day on the post Ethics Hero: The “Lone Juror,” Adam Sirois: Continue reading →

Hypocritical Comment Of The Century

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Today I received this:

“Hi there, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam responses? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it’s driving me insane so any support is very much appreciated.”

The commenter gave his name as “Ecig” and that “similar” blog is an e-cigarette advertising website. His comment about how irritating spam is is spam itself, one of the nearly 536,000 such comments that I have had to review individually since launching Ethics Alarms.|

A dishonest fake comment, purporting to complain about spam while constituting spam, sent to a blog about ethics.

Nice.

Adding Insult To Injury: Critical Spam

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Spam2At least the old comment spam I have been inundated with for the last three years was usually complimentary, if vague and dumb. “Awesome revue! I will return to this weblog in the future, you can be assured of that!” Usually such a rave is attached to a post that is neither remarkable nor “a revue,” and the fact that 16 commenters, some with names like Britney Spears Nude, have exactly the same opinion usually raises suspicions, but hey, a compliment is a compliment. I feel bad sending such nice, appreciative readers to the spam bin with all the lista de email, but I do. (From today’s batch, this intriguing entry from “Graig”: “ierwa ciężkie spojrzenie. – Mówiłeś trochę? – spytał nerwowo. Nieewentualne, żeby nieco wiedział, pomyślał. Ale po co zaanonsował a figę owe? Czyżby? Arnold nie pył złych polityki. Po pro.” Who knows what hidden wisdom is in this missive? And who is “Arnold’?  It’s driving me mad!)

The latest trend, however, is to send nasty spam, on the theory , I suppose, that spam-blockers are set for fawning, and insults might slip through. I’ve received various forms of this comment in the last couple of weeks…

“The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as significantly as this 1. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I basically thought youd have something fascinating to say. All I hear is often a bunch of whining about some thing that you simply could fix in case you werent too busy searching for attention.”

Again, this comment was attached to a completely inappropriate post for that reaction, in this case, my expression of amusement at the story, later shown to be a hoax, about a naked 500 lb. man sitting on the son of Fred Phelps, of Westboro Baptist Church infamy. With all the genuinely whiny posts I have, you would think  “Gesescuro” could find one (excuse me, “1”) of them, but never mind that: isn’t spamming my site and and making me waste my time screening hundreds of them every day (so a genuine comment isn’t inadvertently lost) enough?   Now I have to put up with insulting spam too?

Life is unfair, and the internet is worse.

Now that’s whining, Gesescuro.

Spam Report: I Hate You, Lista De Emails!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

My spam filter has caught 260,504 spam comments to Ethics Alarms to date, and I have read every damn one of them. This is to make certain that one of your comments doesn’t end up in spam purgatory, which sometimes happens, especially if you include a link, or your parents named you “Penis Enlargement” for some reason. You also end up there if you send me a anonymous comment with a fake e-mail, or if you become too insulting or otherwise annoying to justify whatever enlightenment your opinions might provide. I just sent “Another Child of the Future” to Spam Land, as well as “Joe”.

To say I resent spam and spammers wildly understates the case. It is unethical conduct to say the least, and the companies that facilitate the process are beneath contempt. Lately, the field has come to be dominated by something called “lista de email,” which deposits about 100 pieces of junk on Ethics Alarms every day. I really, really hate it, and everyone connected with it. They are vandals, freeloaders, cheaters, liars and frauds. They have added to the abundant wasted time in my life, which was already seriously crowded with the hours I spent studying anti-trust law and the novels of Conrad and Butler,  the weeks I spent trying to read “War” by Raymond Aron, and every second I spent watching soccer, “Hart to Hart,” and “American Idol.”

That is not to say that reading all that spam doesn’t have its occasional rewards, for it is often amusing in a surreal way.  For example: Continue reading →

Spam of the Week (Because I Really, Really Hate These People)

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I have personally read and deleted slightly under 16o,000 spam comments since this blog launched in October, 2009. Spammers are ethically on par with vandals and the creators of computer viruses, and my contempt and disgust for them knows no bounds.

Here, from a commenter named “Limousine Hire” is the spam of the week, the best of the garbage I have to read to make sure your legitimate comments, which make Ethics Alarms what it is, aren’t thrown out with the bathwater:

“I liked up to you will receive performed right here. The comic strip is tasteful, your authored material stylish. nonetheless, you command get got an edginess over that you want be handing over the following. sick without a doubt come more previously once more as precisely the similar just about a lot steadily inside case you defend this increase.”

Now who can argue with THAT?

Hypocritical Spam of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Tastier than usual, though....

This morning my routine cleaning out of the accumulated comment spam sent to Ethics Alarms revealed either that spammers are developing a keen sense of irony, or that their hypocrisy knows no bounds. The following comment, for some reason attached to the Stephen Sondheim Ethics Hero article, read…

“Excellent post! I have been looking for just such information. Your site is a good resource…a little too spammy, though.”

The author of the post was named “Penis Enlargement Pills.”

A Pause To Spew My Hatred of Spam

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A typical day at Ethics Alarms!

One reason, not the only one, but one of them, that I was foiled trying to respond to a series of critical posts on an online forum was that fear of spam had caused the administrators to make it insanely difficult for me to post there—just another way for online spam to plague me. According to Akismet, WordPress’s excellent spam detection service, I now have reviewed and deleted over 45,000 pieces of spam since Ethics Alarms began. (I have to check the spam because occasionally it traps a genuine comment, kind of like dolphins getting caught in tuna nets.)

Let me be clear: I hate these people. I hate the people who send spam, the people who employ spam services, the people who write the deceitful, stupid spam messages, and the spamming outfits that make their grimy living off of it. There is no such thing as an ethical spammer or an ethical company that assists in spamming. By definition, spam is dishonest, as it pretends to offer content when there is none, and purports to represent genuine interest in the site, when it is only interesting in planting a link that will maximize a commercial site’s SEO.

Spam is not only dishonest, but it is insultingly dishonest, because it is so obvious. Continue reading →

Unappetizing Spam Of The Day

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Ethics Alarms gets about two times as many spam comments as real ones, most of which I can discard without a second’s thought. Occasionally one brings me up short, however, like this one. If it’s not spam, the blog is being followed by some very strange people. The comment was:

“Thanks for the post. I am always looking for ways to improve my gardening and cooking skills. My family loves eating real food.’

The post it was in response to is… “Unavoidable Bias in the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Controversy.”

Yuck.

More Spam Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Increasingly, specialty blogs are sporting posts asking whether particular practices are ethical. That is a good thing. The unfortunate part is that too many of the posters lack the tools to answer the question.

You would think the proprietor of a website called “Pro Blog Service,” for example, would be capable of at least spotting the ethical issues in his query about blogging, but no. In a post entitled “Is It Unethical To Edit Spam Comments?“, he describes the common spamming practice of sending in a comment to a blog post that expresses bland and non-specific praise for the original post in order to get a URL publicized. He asks, Continue reading →