by Rick Blechta
No, I’m going to be talking about something small and seemingly insignificant: spam.
As regular readers of Type M know, we had to institute a policy of all comments having to be reviewed before they’re posted on our blog. Why? Because we were getting increasing amounts of spam, people promoting things without regard to the fact that said items or services had nothing to do with why our blog exists.
At the moment, this gatekeeping duty is falling on me, although we’ll all eventually rotate this responsibility between ourselves. (Fortunately, it’s not that onerous a duty.) But having to look at spam comments submitted nearly every day — already two this morning — I’ve been struck by just how useless 99.9% of the offerings are.
What’s troubling is that the internet, something that offers such a potentially wonderful way of communicating on a worldwide basis, has become polluted by so much garbage, messages of real value can barely get through.
As a mental image, I liken spam to all the plastic floating in our oceans. It is useless — although spam is far less harmful and the spam situation much less desperate — but it is another indication how the human species can take pretty well anything that is good, and turn it into a garbage dump.
If you’ve looked at our comments page, you’ve probably noticed the warning (in caps!) about how spam is not welcome here and will not be posted. Has this slowed down the spammers? Nope. Not one iota.
Over the weeks, this has become personal. I, for one, will not give in! I’ve undertaken as a long-term project to go over all of the 3608 posts Type M has in its archives and atomize every single piece of spam.
Why? Because for once I can actually control and eliminate something I view strongly as being a major negative in our blog project. I can really make a difference, even though it’s a very tiny one. And you know what? It is goddam exhilarating!
Stepping off the soapbox…
Rick, more power to you. As a regular reader and occasional commenter I always enjoy this site and everyone's faithfulness to its purpose. A few weeks ago my comment didn't make it into cyber-immortality, and I began to wonder why until realizing that I had most likely forgotten to hit Publish (ouch). Thanks for moderating.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rick. You're our spam fightin' superhero! Whatever we can do to help, let us know. We'll be your Justice League.
ReplyDeleteYou are a man on a mission! Thanks, Rick.
ReplyDeleteI realized recently that one of my author friends was dumped automatically into my spam folder yet as I woman I get daily exhortations to increase the length and strength of a certain part of my non-existant anatomy in my emails. So I have started to peruse my spam folder to find lost souls who I want to hear from.
ReplyDeleteUgh! When people sign-up for my author newsletter (GDR) I firmly crisscross my heart never ever to spam anyone. Spam is the worst way to spend advertising dollars. Ads have been a part of life from medieval hawkers to modern-day email lists. However, could we have some appropriate focus?
I've stopped paying attention to Amazon sponsored ads and recommendations. Yesterday, I ordered something for my kitchen after searching products when I hit but an ad came up trying to change my mind to something else before I could buy the product I had chosen with due diligence. Creepy.
By the way, I've been an Amazon customer since 2000, have written only 1 bad book review (I've read thousands of books), and returned only two items. So overall I happy but still unnerved.
I get approximately 1200 spam emails in my spam box and about 50 regular emails. wow! Every day I tag at least 5 to 7 as phishing and another 3 or 4 that slip thru the filter as obvious junk. The scariest are the ones that imitate real emails from appropriate senders. Just did research on a couple that lost $800,000 down payment on a house because a hacker had infiltrated their home closing documents.
And as you point out, Marty, spam filters really aren't a great solution. I don't know what the answer is, but being able to stamp out all spam on Type M has been a very satisfying endeavor, even if it's cutting into my already overworked life.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, and I was very pleased to be able to press "publish" when I saw the notice for your comment in my email inbox!