Tag Archives: spammers

Beware of Email Scams

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Over the last 10 days, I have received 2 emails purporting to come from WordPress and asking me to renew my domain. The below is the text of the latest scam, and I’m reproducing it here in order to bring the scam to the attention of my followers and other WordPress users:

 

“Auto Payment ID Declined

 

 

Dear Valued Customer,

 

We attempted to process your automatic payment for your domain renewal at WordPress.com, but unfortunately, your payment method was declined.

 

To avoid any disruption to your website or email services, please update your payment method or renew your domain manually as soon as possible.

 

Renew My Domain <https://soyfix.com/log/log/login.php>

 

Thank you for choosing WordPress.com.

 

________________________________

 

Kind regards,

WordPress.com Billing Team”.

 

You will see that the link to renew the domain does not contain a WordPress web address. This is a big red flag indicating that the email does not come from WordPress and should be deleted.

 

If you have any doubts about the status of your domain you should log into your account on wordpress.com to check its status. Please never click on a link within an email purporting to come from WordPress.

 

Anyone Fancy Spam For Breakfast?

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Until very recently all of the spam I received was for older posts on my blog. However the spammers are now commenting on articles which have only recently appeared here. Fortunately most of the junk is caught by the WordPress filters but the odd spam comment slips through the net and ends up in my inbox to await it’s swift dispatch to my site’s spam folder.

Most spam comments are glaringly obvious, being marked out as junk by terrible grammar, poor sentence construction and spelling which ought to have the spammer confined to the stocks and pelted with rotten eggs. Come to think of it generators of junk should be put in the stocks as a matter of course irrespective of their ability to spell. So who’s going to throw the first egg? Form an orderly queue please and no pushing!

Anyone Fancy Spam For Lunch?

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One of the chores of maintaining a blog is going through the spam folder. All those kind individuals wishing to sell you products, such as Viagra which you didn’t even know you needed until their sales pitch ended up in your spam folder. Actually even after it arrived in your spam queue you aren’t exactly convinced that you have a burning desire for whatever product the spammer happens to be hawking!

Going through the spam can be a real pain in the neck. However I do, on occasions derive some humour from the comments which end up there. Take for example this comment which I discovered lurking in my spam this morning:

“Thanks so considerably for this! I have not been this thrilled by a blog post for fairly some time! You have received it, whatsoever that means in running

a blog. In any case, Youa??re definitely a person that has anything to say that individuals should listen to.”

I haven’t got a clue what the spammer is talking about but it did bring a smile to my face!

On a serious point I can not, for the life of me make out what spammers hope to achieve by comments such as that quoted above. OK the people hawking Viagra (fake or otherwise) constitute a right royal pain. I can, however understand their motivation (I.E. the desire to make money) but what possesses someone to write utter gibberish such as the example given above? It beats me, it really does!