Akismet has stopped more than 36,000 spam comments from being posted on my site over the two years I’ve been blogging, a milestone reached yesterday. (Happy anniversary to me!)

I scan through the “holding pen” every once in a while, and usually the spam is obvious. But recently one of the stopped messages took a different approach, boldly promising to “post your promotional message on millions of forums worldwide.” It actually said, “No, this isn’t spam email. It’s penetrating online established communities…” Right, you can generate 400,000 “unique” forum posts, complete with a link to your web site, but it’s not spam. Good luck with that one.

I also ran across something else recently that seemed to be a new form of spam. I was contacted on Facebook by two people I’ve never heard of, wanting to be friends. Here’s a tip. If you want to befriend me and I don’t know you, or it’s been a long time since we’ve encountered each other, write a line explaining where you got my name or where we met and why we should connect. Otherwise, I’m assuming you’re a spammer. Am I wrong?

Akismet (”You have better things to do with your life than deal with the underbelly of the internet”) has caught more than 8,800 spam messages for me since I activated it on my blog in May, and what a great tool it is. Every once in a while, I look through the messages Akismet has identified as spam and put in the holding pen, just to see what spammers think works these days. There are lots of messages that just contain multiple links; they don’t even waste time trying to pretend they are real messages. Others try, but Askimet hasn’t been fooled by such shameless flattery as “You have an outstanding good and well structured site” or “A very interesting site with top design and contents!” or lame attempts like “Hmmm…very interesting! Thanks!” or “Hi all. Cool site. Thank.”

Meanwhile, my e-mail quarantines lots of messages from names you could possibly know (although how many people do you know with “X.” for a middle initial?), although the subject lines get right to the point about certain body parts or available drugs. Really, do people fall for this stuff??

There’s a new category of scams making the rounds (well, it was new to me): hostile messages supposedly from an eBay buyer saying things like “I want my money back because I did not received (sic) my item until now. I will report you to eBay as fraud if you will not respond.”

A major clue is that the item mentioned is nothing you have ever heard of, but I have to admit, the messages look very authentic, right down to the “marketplace safety tip” they include about not responding to e-mails! Of course, they aren’t real. If you get one, forward it (without changing the header or adding any comment) to spoof@ebay.com, where the fetchingly named eBay SafeHarbor Investigations Team will take over.

Just for fun, I had a look through the 58 spam messages that were in Akismet’s holding pen and was amused to find these attempts to get through spam filters (amid mostly offers for various prescription drugs):

“Very sensible post…”

“Hello! Good Site! Thanks you!”

“Amazing info, and a great blog to boot…”

I love that Akismet has caught 3,687 spam messages for me since I installed it. I love their friendly approach (for instance, the Akismet site says, “We can’t stand spam. Who can? You have better things to do with your life than deal with the underbelly of the internet.”). And I love that they provide Akismet free for personal use.

Feeling battered today after returning from Montreal last night – going there took five hours, coming home took seven, because the highway had been closed for many, many hours after an accident. Although the section was opened by the time we got there, you’d never know it from the traffic.

But I digress. I wanted to share some amusing spam that came in just before I left:

• One from “Daniel Gerrad” (obviously messages with a name that might be a real one get through many filters) who owns a company “based on Chinese and African textile and fabric material in the UK.” Daniel was looking for a trustworthy rep in Canada. Hey, I could get paid weekly “without leaving or affecting” my present job! I could get 10% of payments from Daniel’s “patronizing” customers in Canada!
• One supposedly from CIBC, with a warning note that my access to online services had been suspended. I had not noticed because I don’t have an account with CIBC. Not to worry, because all I had to do to reactivate the acount was click on a link embedded in the e-mail.

Do people really fall for these things?

Sue’s busy summer continues, with another break in blogging on the horizon: I’m off to Nova Scotia for a wedding. So I’ve been busy making sure all my projects are up to date (and I’m pleased to say, some are even ahead of schedule). Just checked my feeds and tried to catch up on all the other blogs I follow; made a small stab at it but still left some with 10-15 posts to catch up on.

Meanwhile, the latest creative spellings in Toronto’s largest newspaper: something was at a “discrete” (distinct or separate) distance rather than discreet; someone wanted to “sew” the seeds (with needle and thread?) rather than sow; and someone’s credentials were “bone” fide vs. bona fide (genuine or sincere). What booboos have you seen lately?

P.S. Akismet gleefully tells me it has stopped more than 3,000 spam messages since it was installed. I often take a fast look through the ones in the holding cell, and am astounded how many talk about Vi*agara and similar products. Are these messages really effective?

After coming back from Las Vegas to 200 pieces of smelly comment spam, I knew it was time to get help. Thanks to Joan Donogh of In Formation Design, who designed and hosts this site, I discovered that WordPress has a built-in filter for comment spam. All I had to do was register for a WordPress.com account and I received by e-mail the free key to turn on Akismet (short for Automatic Kismet).

It’s not only super effective, the Akismet people have a sense of humour. You can go in (under “current activity”) and check to make sure a legitimate comment wasn’t tagged as spam; the program saves the spam in a database for 15 days before automatically deleting it. Today it said it had caught 46 spam comments, and added: “You have no spam currently in the queue. Today must be your lucky day! ”

I’m a happy girl.

The only surprise is that it took so long: I’ve just received my first “comment spam,” which Wikipedia says is “done by automatically posting random comments” in the hopes of increasing a site’s search engine ranking. Of course, that only works if the comment gets posted and readers actually click through to the highlighted site.

In a way, you have to give spammers a tiny bit of credit for ingenuity. Although surely fewer people every day are falling for “enhancement” offers and invitations to receive large sums of money in return for delivering a bank account number, spammers keep coming up with new ways to trick us. Lately I’ve received a few breathless messages telling me “someone” has sent me an e-card (sorry, I don’t follow those links unless a friend’s name appears somewhere) or sternly advising me that I must update my online banking information – with an institution I don’t even use. Spiders and bots sweep the Web trollng for e-mail addresses. Bloggers get comment spam.

Ah, the evolution of the Web. Isn’t it grand?