The email from Tom was as routine as could be, an unintended consequence of being a blawger.  There are a thousand, maybe ten thousand, Toms out there, each of whom comes to work every morning in the basement of their parents’ home with the hope that somehow, some way, the target of their desire who hasn’t succumbed to the lure of their thousand, maybe ten thousand, predecessors, will be weak today and, maybe, just maybe, bite.

Hi,

My name is Tom and I am a link builder. I sell blog comment links for website owners at low price.
Blog comment links can help you in a number of ways. Here are three major advantages:
 – Increase link and IP popularity
 – Direct traffic to your site
 – Higher rankings in search engines
I can do thousands of blog comment links for your site in a couple of days, and they get indexed very fast. If you would like more details about my offer, or would like to ask me anything you’d like regarding this matter, feel free to reply with a YES to the following email address: tsandersxxx @gmail.com

Best regards,
Tom

So what if its not personalized.  Sometimes the program screws up.  I’m sure Tom would love me if I reply YES.  Oh, and paid.  I could keep him in Cheetos for a week, and that would be awesome.

But Tom is no fly by night SEO bandit.  He’s got a confidentiality warning at the bottom of his email, showing how serious he is, and likely to overcome any aversion I might have to his using a gmail address as a sign of his tech savvy.

———————–DISCLOSURE———————————–
Confidentiality, Privacy, and Security Notice:
The content, materials, and accompanying attachment(s) contained within any eMail (electronic mail transmission) is intended solely for the individual or entity to which it is addressed [authorized recipient(s)] which may be confidential, exempt from disclosure under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and/or legally privileged. The message facilitates a previous agreement of the transaction/service of a transactional relationship for which the intended recipient explicitly has double confirmed agreement to be contacted and informed in an ongoing capacity. If you are not the intended recipient(s), responsible for delivering partially or in full any transmission to the intended recipient(s), and/or have received the transmission in error, you are hereby notified you are strictly prohibited from reading, copying, printing, distributing and/or disclosing any of the content, materials, and accompanying attachment(s) contained within. If you have received any portion of the transmission in error, please notify the original sender by forwarding all transmissions to replytotomsanders @seo-links.com and delete the original along with all copies of the transmission to include any accompanying attachment(s). Any views, commentary, and/or opinions presented within are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of any other company(s) or parent entity(s).
At anytime you may stop further transactional communications by letting us know by emailing us at unsubscribeyouremailfromtoms   @gmail.com and you will no longer receive communications from us.
Tom Sanders | 1211 S. Main St, Chico, CA 90119
This advertisement is in complete Compliance with the FEDERAL CAN SPAM ACT of 2003. You may unsubscribe at anytime by simply clicking the http://clients.automateyourlist.com/z/r/?LOxMnExstCzsHIxMHJyctEb0nMwubCzMTA== here within the email.
To Report SPAM ABUSE Please Email The Hosting Company at: [email protected]
———————–END of DISCLOSURE————————

It’s fortunate that Tom put “end of disclosure” so that I didn’t feel constrained to keep his secret, even though his belief that I  “explicitly . .  double confirmed agreement to be contacted and informed,” which I guess would mean that I replied “YES, YES” to his email, though that wouldn’t be possible since his email was the first I’ve learned of Tom and his SEO magic.  And then, there’s no such address in Chico, California, but that doesn’t matter since on the internet, nobody has to actually be anywhere to be real.

Most meaningful to me is that Tom can “do thousands of blog comment links for your site in a couple of days.”  You see, last week, SJ was spammed overnight with 748 comments from a single person.  This week, one fellow has been working feverishly to get a spam comment through over the past couple of days, providing me with about 500 comments as of this writing saying very nice things about me and my posts.  I apparently inspire him.  And, I might add, I respect his tenacity, though it isn’t going to help him get a comment to see the light of day.

But there would no need for Tom, or last week’s spammer, or this week’s spammer, or the ordinary spammers who leave me ten, or fifty, or even a hundred, spam comments if there wasn’t some fool on the internet who thought this was his path to wealth and success.  Many, sadly, are lawyers, and there is no shortage of lawyer spam being left for me from such exotic locales as Russia.  Of course, the lawyers involved know nothing about what their flavor of Tom is up to.  They only know that they wants thousands of comments left in a couple of days so they can be instant internet successes.

What occurs to me as well, however, is how many bloggers enable this “industry” by allowing, even loving, spam comments.  I understand, you get no comments otherwise and you feel very lonely, very unloved.  I realize that spam comments often say very nice things about you, and who doesn’t appreciate a complement, even if it’s written in Cyrillic.  I get it.

And you aren’t alone, as I pointed out to none other than  Legal Blog Watch’s Soaring Lone Eagle Bruce Carton the other day.  And then there are the lawprofs, who prefer to intellectualize the possibility that they really do have fans in far away places who deeply respect their scholarly writings, and just happen to sell used cars and Dubai real estate on the side.

It’s understandable that some bloggers can’t manage to find the time to clean up the spam in their comments.  Lord knows they didn’t put in much time copying a post from a newspaper article and adding their plea to the end to “buy me.”  And then there is the ego issue, how wonderful it is that people all over the world think you’re truly special and adore your posts, who use commenter names like Akron Auto Supply and Cleveland Surplus Underwear.  What blogger doesn’t want a long thread of adoring fans?

Yet, imagine a blawgosphere that wasn’t replete with spam.  Imagine a morning when there wasn’t a hundred, a thousand, spam comments to delete.  If you don’t let your adoring fans use your blog as their personal dumping ground, then they might have to get real jobs.  I hear McDonald’s is hiring.

No, I don’t think today is going to be Tom’s day.  At least not here.  In fact, I don’t even think there is a Tom, any more than there is a business operating in the park where his address should be.  It’s the internet, and it’s only as much of an opportunity as we make it.  Not for us, mind you, as legitimate folks are the ones paying money to the scammers and spammers because they know something we don’t.  This is all part of a plan to empty the pockets of desperate foolish people.  That they make our lives miserable in the process is just a side benefit.

Bite the bullet and deal with it on your blog as well.  Don’t make Tom’s day.  And don’t feel bad for Tom.  He doesn’t exist.