Confessions of a Comment Spammer

by Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy on May 17, 2007

I get a ton of email. Most of it's crap, but my email client Thunderbird (by the makers of Firefox) does a good job screening out the spam (though it's remarkably inept at relegating email with the subject line of "Get V!agr* cheap!" to the spam can).

I didn't think I could get anything in email that would shock me — until a couple of days ago.

A little backstory is necessary. Over the past couple of weeks, this blog has been getting hammered with comments from various people who were all plugging a new real estate related show on HGTV called "Bought & Sold". Each of these comments took the form of one line of quasi-related comment on the post (you could tell the commenter had at least skimmed the blog post) followed by a plug and a link for Bought & Sold.

I let these comments go until one day, I got socked with 3 or 4 of them. Then *I* made this comment:

Sheese HGTV, how about laying off the spammy comments for your shows? (I know, they’ll never see this, but it makes me feel better.)

The next one gets deleted and hgtv.com gets the old domain blacklist treatment in my SpamKarma plug in…. I hate doing that, but it’s getting quite tiresome.

I truly didn't expect to see anything come out of my comment. Full-fledged comment spammers never come back and read (or care).

Here's where the shocking email comes into play…. This shows up in my inbox on Tuesday:

Jay,

My name is Ryan Ku and I am the VP of Client Services here at Marketingworks. We are currently managing an online word-of-mouth campaign for HGTV in support of the program Bought & Sold. It has come to my attention that one of our ambassadors posted on your blog and that you voiced significant concern regarding this action.

I am writing to apologize for this action and for any offense we may have caused. Our intention is not to spam blindly but to add to the natural conversation and present what we believe is a relevant message to a targeted audience. I have instructed the team to cease this type of activity on your blog as well as other real-estate blogs that we have identified.Again, I’m very sorry for the perceived intrusion on your site.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Best regards,
Ryan

Ryan Ku
VP, Client Services
Marketingworks, Inc.

While I don't really think that I voiced "significant concern", I was most certainly irritated. But I never expected a response to my comment.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Mr. Ku quite nobly fell on his sword and corrected the perceived wrongdoing. That is quite commendable and speaks volumes for Marketingworks.

I don't believe Mr. Ku and team intended to spam, and I'll admit to being a little sensitive to it as we get dozens of comment spams a day. The plugins do a fine job stopping most of it in its tracks, though some slip through. It's a constant battle.

If anyone out there in the re.net is still getting these HGTV comments and would like them to cease and desist, let me know and I can give you Mr. Ku's contact info.

Personally, I'm going to TiVo Bought & Sold right now…

Technorati Tags: Marketingworks, HGTV, Bought & Sold, Ryan Ku

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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Austin Realtor's Wife 05.17.07 at 6:17 pm: I can’t decide if you’re intelligent, kind and mature or if you’re a sucker for flowery speech… what do you think?
2 Norm Fisher 05.17.07 at 7:16 pm: Austin Realtor’s Wife, I’ve met Jay in person. He’s definitely intelligent, kind and mature but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not a sucker for a flowery speech. I guess it all depends on whether or not the spamming stopped.
3 Jeff Brown 05.17.07 at 11:17 pm: I received some of the same stuff and just commented back with some tongue in cheek barbs. They stopped.

I like your way better.
4 Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy 05.18.07 at 6:47 am: The intelligence of Einstein, the kindness of Mother Theresa, the maturity of …… Brittney? Paris? no wait, those two aren’t exactly mature….

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just gullible. But the HGTV comments appear to have stopped. Only time will tell if they have truly ceased. I tried to reply to this email twice, but interestingly, my ISP flagged it with a cryptic undeliverable message — something about a spam domain.

I did have to chuckle at the use of “ambassadors”. What is up with all the funky names for employees? Disney has “Cast members”, lots of places have “associates”, apparently Marketingworks has “ambassadors”. Personally, I prefer “minions” or “underlings”. How come nobody uses those?
5 Mark A. 05.18.07 at 7:09 am: It (the flowery speech thing) all started with the Nigerian 419 scams. Be polite, and prosper.
6 Kris Berg 05.18.07 at 7:43 am: Jay - This is too funny! My spam count is up to about 1000 a day. Will you please write each of them a nice letter and ask them to stop? While you are at it, I have a particularly bothersome troll which could use some sweet talking.
7 Athol Kay 05.18.07 at 5:51 pm: Actually the secret is that Jay just offered to nuke them. All it takes is one person marking you as spam and then the Spam Filter sends the message to the filter host and then the host updates all the other spam filters. Bingo! Thou Art Spam Everywhere.

Happened to me once.

Also I actually sent my HGTV spammers a copy of a blog post that I still have in my draft folder. It was called “HGTV Brought and Sold is Horrible” and the post laid out exactly that the constant spam advertising the show was offensive and if I hit the spam button it was actually going to spam slam http://www.hgtv.com itself as an URL because the spammers kept using it as the address on my blog.

I got no reply, but trust me on this, I never saw them anywhere ever again on anyones blog.
8 Greg Broadbent 05.18.08 at 5:30 pm: So what is this Bought and Sold program going to be about? Is it another copy of “flip this house”. I hope they at least have some value to the show.

Did they stop writing on everyone’s blog?