No, this post isn’t about mutated meat by-products I found in the back of the pantry. I started getting comments on some of the posts last night. The first was obviously spam. The second seemed to somewhat fit the post it was associated with, although there were one or two odd things about it. It was definitely about books, though, and not some random gibberish or the odd flattery that sometimes shows up. I typed a brief reply and went to bed. Both the comment and my reply have since been deleted.
When I got up this morning, there were more. Five more have shown up today, for a total of seven. Some appear to be in a foreign language. The others seem to be lifted from someone else’s blog. One of them was an author’s reply to a fan about a particular book he had written. There was enough detail for me to identify the author and the book with just a few keystrokes.
All of the bogus comments link back to Facebook accounts which may or may not be real and all of which block my seeing any posts on their pages.
Anyway, I’ve marked the lot as spam and hope that I’ve seen the end of it. First time commenters are sent to moderation. Returning commenters are automatically approved. There have been some new commenters this week that I’ve aproved. On the off chance that someone who is a first-time commenter doesn’t see their comment within 24 hours, please drop me an email at the email address on the sidebar. This email address doesn’t go to my phone, so if I’m out of pocket, it might be a day or two before I see it.
I have been lucky so far in that my blog’s spam folder catches most spam, with the odd exception every now and again. Still, one has to be careful and I would advice you to backup you blog’s contents, which I’m sure you’re doing anyway.
My webhoster (Is that a word?) backs everything up once a week. As often as I’m (not) posting these days, that’s probably a good rate.
The weird things is that the comments are showing up, but the posts themselves aren’t showing any page views. I’m sure there’s a good explanation for that, but it’s beyond my present understanding of the technology.
Is it just me, or does “Strange Spam” sound like the title of an H. P. Lovecraft pastiche?
Now that you mention it…
A student at Miskatonic University can’t afford to go home over winter break. While looking the back of the dormitory pantry for something to eat, he discovers an unusual can of what appears to be processed meat by-product. Little does he know that when he opens it….