Spam, spam, everywhere spam

It’s midday in Sydney and this blog has already received 16 spam comments today. Fortunately I don’t have to deal with them as I use a WordPress plugin called Akismet to weed them out for me. They end up in a special folder where I can check them if I have the patience.

In the last 6 months there have been 29,783 spam comments on this blog.

Can you believe it? 29,783!!! I can’t.

This blog is not especially popular. I don’t post as often as I’d like, and some of what I post is not relevant to many people. And yet in the last year there has been 36,359 comments classified as spam.

As you can see, the number of comments rose to a peak in September. I’m not sure what the story was or what causes the rise and fall in spam. Has anyone else seen similar figures?

Here is a sample of the sort of comments we mean by spam:

As you see, they all want to sell me something, or sell you something. Or worse.

Maybe I need to add one of those things where you have to enter the funny characters you see on the screen. I know Akismet is sealing them off for me, but just allowing them to add the comment in the first place offends me.

What do you think?

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