There’s a tremendous volume of spam that this blog attracts, sometimes close to 10,000 comments per day. I imagine it’s because of the search value in the blog, and that it’s been around for more than a dozen years.

Much of it is well handled by the spam plugins set up with WordPress. Some of it I have to go through manually. And if I ever make a mistake and mistag a comment that you’ve made, I deeply apologize. It’s rare, I may not know if it has ever happened and I’m generally pretty good about getting that stuff right. But the volume means that sometimes I could make a mistake. Please let me know if it happens to you and I’ll retrieve your comment.

Most spam is obvious. I came across the least obvious spam ever, so perfectly targeted for this blog that I actually followed the links myself!

I received a ‘trackback’ from a site implying a 75,000 point signup bonus for a United credit card. Wow!

I followed the link. It briefly brought me to a page of gibberish. And then forwarded to a porn site.

Here’s what vexedme.

• This spam was really specific to the site. That is, most spam is for things I (and readers) would have no interest in.
  
• It used credit cards as the come on for porn. In other words, the supposition is that a big credit card bonus is the kind of thing people would click on, as a way of tricking or enticing them to become interested in porn.
  
• Usually it’s the other way around.

Dare I ask, what that says about signup bonuses?

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