Should This Happen?

[John Newton]

I went onto one Book Blog hoping for intelligent discussion about books and writing. And what do I get? A come-on Email from a purported young African woman, complete with sexy photograph, giving me a detailed tale of being left an orphan by the Liberian civil war, etc etc, and suggesting I telephone her in her refugee camp in Dakar, Senegal.  Great idea.  Next will be 'Please send money so I can fly to meet you, darling., This is probably written by a fat Nigerian bloke in south London who has run out of suckers to send bank details so we can share the millions his Dad filched from some treasury or other.  Do you get much of this on your blog site?  John

[Chasity Brewer]

I have never had an issue until this lady, she is the first one with some off the wall idea. I was very irritated by it however and I don't think she should be on here considering she has nothing to do with books, and it has nothing to do with why we all join together here. This may sound harsh but that email that you and I both recieved unneved me and I dislike things like this very very much.

[John Newton]

It it obvious to me that this is a co ending up in asking for money...

[Irina Shapiro]

Hi, John.  That definately should not have happened.  I actually get a lot of e-mails like this, but not through Book Blogs.  Just delete it and forget about it.  Most people on here are all about reading, blogging and promoting books, so that's what you should expect.  Hope you enjoy this site as much as I do.

 

Irina

www.irinashapiro.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Irina-Shapiro/307374895948375

[John Newton]

Thanks Irina.  I too am used to this sort of thing but woried that,perhaps, young women in America moght not meet it veryu often

[Sher A Hart]

Very rarely do I get any spam on my Blogger blog even after I removed the captchas because I have trouble reading them. Once in a while I get an email notice of a comment with spam links, but when I go to my blog to check, the comment didn't post. 

There's a new problem though with business sites. If they comment to say something nice about your post but don't leave a link in the text, Blogger doesn't catch them. There's a link connected to their comment profile though. So if I see their name is something like tshirts unlimited, I now remove the comment so the SEO counters don't add my website to their stats. I only noticed when three tshirt sites commented in a row on an older post. They do that because you're not as likely to check comments on old posts, but the search engines count any link, old or new, to move the spammer's site up in the rankings.  It's blogger beware. No matter what host you use, always check your comment links.

[John Newton]

Thanks Sher.  Good advice