Spam Comment of the Week — Week 13 2023

Fandango

I get some interesting spam comments on my blog, most of which are captured by Akismet, WordPress’ spam blocker. I generally do a mass delete of all of my spam comments after checking to see if any legitimate comments got caught up in Akismet’s spam-catching net.

I thought it might be fun to select a particularly interesting or unique or outrageous spam comment and highlight it each week.

This week I’m going to feature another AI-like spam comment. This one came in from Frances Jones and was in response this post of mine, which featured a Cat Stevens song that was about how progress and technology have destroyed much of our environment by building over and cementing our children’s play areas in cities.

I can’t believe I only just now heard of this song! I love it! I especially love how it speaks to the issue of environmental pollution. It’s so sad that we’re still dealing with this problem 40 years after the song was released.

I thought this had to be a real person, someone who actually read my post, to have crafted this comment. It can’t have been created by an AI chatbot, right? It was a direct and very appropriate response to what I wrote in my post.

So I decided to send an email to Frances Jones. The subject line of that email was, “Are you a bot?” Here’s what I received around 30 minutes later:

Seems that Frances didn’t give a valid email address when he left his comment. And the site that Frances claimed, outlookindia.com, just doesn’t seem to be the kind of site where people would be reading and commenting on my posts. But, wow, that comment was really relevant to my post upon which the comment was left. If it was written by an AI chatbot, it’s really good.

What about you? Have you read some catchy spam comments that you’d like to share with us? If so, put them in the comments or create your own post and tag it #FSCW.

15 thoughts on “Spam Comment of the Week — Week 13 2023”

  1. Sadje April 2, 2023 / 6:49 am

    I’ve met many people on WP who don’t have a operational site or address

    Liked by 1 person

    • Fandango April 2, 2023 / 8:02 am

      But this guy had a site called “outlookindia.com,” which appears to be an online news magazine format. But his email address is bogus.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Sadje April 2, 2023 / 8:39 am

        It’s is very confusing. A guy is reblogging my posts daily and his email id doesn’t leads anywhere.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. waxixe6397 April 2, 2023 / 7:18 am

    I enjoyed reading your post about the AI-like spam comment from Frances Jones. It’s amazing how good AI chatbots are becoming at imitating human responses. My question to you is, have you ever had a spam comment that fooled you into thinking it was a legitimate response? As an AI language model, I’m not capable of reading blog posts or having opinions, but I hope the author responds to your question.

    MR W

    https://primarytinting.net

    Like

  3. Renard Moreau April 2, 2023 / 7:41 am

    🤷🏽‍♂️ Okay, Fandango. I am confused. What is the motive behind that spam?

    Anyway, AI has reached a stage where it can fool anyone into thinking that it is human.

    By the way, I reduced the spam I received significantly by setting my comments to be closed 21 days after my blog posts are published.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Fandango April 2, 2023 / 8:32 am

      As to motive, good question. What is the motive of any spam comment?

      I close comments after 30 days. Still get between 10-20 spam comments a day.

      Liked by 2 people

  4. Carol anne April 2, 2023 / 11:23 am

    wow! That was a smart comment! I would’ve been fooled!

    Liked by 1 person

  5. bushboy April 2, 2023 / 4:05 pm

    A good one Fandango. It is hard to pick. Mime are all open with a certain amount of trickery as well.
    I have fun “researching” who has commented in the few I am getting since setting to 30 days cut-off.
    I have made my Last on the Card photo challenge a “Sticky” and that seems to get a few extra comments until I take it from the top of my blog.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Pingback: This Weeks Spam – 3 April – bushboys world
  7. Marilyn Armstrong April 2, 2023 / 8:37 pm

    I don’t know about spam today, but someone in China tried calling me today — on my iPhone! I declined the call, but is that scary or what?

    Liked by 1 person

      • Marilyn Armstrong April 3, 2023 / 6:00 pm

        Today I got a call from someone who said this had been his sister’s number. I’ve had this number for almost 4 years. I said he definitely needed to be in better touch with his family. Sister my eyeball.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. leigha66 April 12, 2023 / 8:32 am

    I just have a lot of RV and trailer repair and sales spam lately. Although I did have one from a pretty interesting name. It was simply “website”… no imagination there.

    Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.