I’ve Got a Secret Admirer. Well, Almost…

Blogging, humor, lessons learned, technology 2 Minutes

For the past couple of months, I have been receiving occasional comments from what appears to be someone associated with a liquor store in Colorado. Here are the comments I’ve received, which I have never posted because they just seemed a little over the top and a little off with the grammar.

  • Excellent write-up, I have always enjoyed your articles, you’re such a wonderful writer, always on point. This article is loaded to the hilt, I thoroughly enjoyed myself reading it and at the same time I was hugely enlightened. I will keep developing my writing skills so that one day I will be at your level. Thanks
  • Thanks for sharing such an amazing blog. I must say you are doing a great job. Keep doing such hard work. Your blogs are really very informative. Keep posting! Good Luck for your upcoming updates (yes, this is a repeat of a comment made six weeks ago; see below)
  • No doubt , post is incredible and informational also. Every time i read your blog i just stuck with the content of post that how easily you describe each and every aspects of topic of the post. Great inspiration for me .
  • Sometimes the topic of one of your articles comes at just the right time. This one will be revisited time and time again.
  • Thanks for sharing such an amazing blog. I must say you are doing a great job. Keep doing such hard work. Your blogs are really very informative. Keep posting! Good Luck for your upcoming updates.
  • Thanks a lot for the advice, your blog posts are great as usual. Interesting article! Keep sharing such great things.

So as you see, either someone really likes my blog, or this is spam.

I decided to check.

I copied verbatim the comment that starts “Thanks for sharing such an amazing blog…” and pasted it into Google. I hit enter, and I found 36 web sites where this exact comment had been posted, as early as 2015, but most of them are much more recent.

So while my suspicions were confirmed, I was really hoping it was a real person, someone who really liked my blog. A spammer has been two-timing me.

I guess my first clue that it was likely a fake comment should have been that someone like one of my posts that much.

I don’t even like most of my posts that much…

*image from Archer International

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

Published

66 thoughts on “I’ve Got a Secret Admirer. Well, Almost…”

  2. I wonder what spammers like this are trying to sell. And who do they think their target audience is, a bunch of brain-damaged orangutans? If so, I’d better exercise more caution in the future.

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  4. No comments that specifically speak to a post are generally a clue. If you ever figure out what liquor store, you could have a little fun with them. “Thanks for quenching my thirst. That really hit the spot! I can see why many people shop here! Your selection is amazing! I’m going to have to tell all my friends about your wonderful libations!”

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  7. It is disappointing when what seems to be admiration turns out to be fake. I get a bunch of spam comments. They aren’t as well done as most of yours though. They were mostly hyping medications. Your post prompted me to check the spam comments file and I found what appears to be a legit comment I missed.

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  8. I also had a lot of mindless, generic posts recently. These were all from, supposedly, different blog accounts, but some actually duplicated comments. They might have got away with it if they hadn’t all appeared together. (Although they were all pretty irrelevant to the blog post.)

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    1. it’s nice to know I’m not alone in getting such comments; these were pretty generic, so they could have gone with any post, but I know I haven’t written as many great posts as this spammer has commented on!

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  9. I have run into these myself and I find they are usually posted to much older posts. And the URL they use is commonly the tip off to it being spam. I usually block the user, mark it as spam, and delete it permanently. In this day and age, I guess it is impossible to avoid this kind of unwanted attention. But don’t let any of that fool you, you still have a ton of less secret admirers!

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  10. Jim, I’m so disappointed you didn’t recognise my posts. Sometimes I post under a different name, like movie stars who wear a wig so they’re not recognised. Obviously my ruse didn’t work.Okay, back to spam central now to chat with my robot mates. Cheerio laddie

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  13. I screen shot and save comments like that before I delete them, and when I have enough I make a post out of them. I’m a particular fan of those which compliment me on my in-depth knowledge of the subject – on my About Me page 😂

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  15. Ha Ha! Hope realizing they were spam wasn’t too much of a blow to your ego!
    I have received similar comments. The ones I like the best is when it says what an informative post it is and how they appreciate that. Not quite sure how my stories equate with being informative posts … but … perhaps they didn’t know before that cows and chickens could talk? 🙂

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    1. Yes, WP does a good job catching spam. Somehow these few got through the filter. And I can see why a poem titled “Morning Coffee” could get spammed. I’m sure it’s a popular search phrase. Have a good week, Richard!

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  20. All I’ve been getting is 30 or 40 spam comments a week (on older posts) that say “Muchas gracias. ?Como puedo iniciar sesion? I did get one “Would love to perpetually get updated oytstanding web blog!” So glad Akismet is catching all these!

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    1. I’m surprised the WordPress spam filter did not mark them as spam. For now, they are just sitting in my pending for approval folder. That way I can go back and read them whenever I need an ego boost… 🙂

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  23. And you were too kind and polite to correct the grammar of the non-English-speaking droid. I appreciate your forbearance, but my eye was captured by this one: “Every time i read your blog i just stuck with the content of post that how easily you describe each and every aspects of topic of the post.” I am not sure how a robot lost its way so severely. Even my Gmail grammar check is better than that. Have you considered the possibility that it might be a genuine Google Translate error? My German sounds a lot like that.

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  24. HAHAHA I had a great laugh reading this post! =))) Good thing you googled it and discovered the truth (no matter how we expected it to be disappointing?) 😂 I mean, I’d appreciate if a real person really reads my posts too than a bot saying made-up and copy-pasted comments. =)) Nevertheless, I’ve seen some of those too… They’re just commenting “nice blog” or something it’s annoying sometimes coz you know they didn’t read the post anyway. Lol. I mean, I hope comments wouldn’t be impersonal as those =))

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  25. LOLLLLL two timed by a spammer, that’s hilarious. But good sleuthing! I always sleuth out the lulus I get in my emails. I’m solicited to the hilt with email requests from people who ‘love my blog and have been following for a long time’, asking to be a guest on my blog because they are sure they have things in common with my blog on topics that are nowhere related to my writing, And I recognize none of them as ‘long time’ or anytime followers, lol. Thank goodness for delete buttons! 🙂

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