For readers unfamiliar with content management systems like Movable Type (which this site uses), one annoying trend is comment spam, where an automated system will place comments on various articles, linking back to a target site — often one that sells cigarettes, for whatever reason.
The original goal for comment spam was apparently to boost Google page rankings for ne’er-do-well sites by increasing their number of “incoming links.” Movable Type and Google are now smart enough to keep this from happening, but the spam comments persist. MT-Blacklist, a plug-in, does a good job helping sort out the valid comments from the crap, but some of the older articles on the site which pre-date MT-Blacklist still have spam comments.
Which brings us to today. Every time someone adds a comment to the site, I get a copy of it in my email. This morning I got a strange one:
Q: if two players are presented with a diamond flush(Ace, Queen, 10, 7, and 3) in the five community cards and player A has in the hole (ace of hearts and queen of clubs), and Player B has in the hole (jack of diamonds,and 9 of spade). who is the winner?,and please explain why player A or B is the winner.thankyou
I get a lot of off-topic questions, but this one seemed perversely far afield. (Even though I knew the answer: Player B, right?) Only when I pulled up the entry did I realize that the comment directly above it was a leftover spam ad for “seven card stud x play poker online x free texas holdem…” So the new “question” was really comment spam designed to boost exposure to the first comment spam.
It was meta-spam.
On one hand, I was sort of impressed. The spamming system either kept track of everywhere it placed its first spam and went back for a follow-up (months later, it seems), or searched the web for copies of the first spam and tacked on the second.
Here’s to you, Mr. Spammer, for a hard day’s coding. Now go to hell.