First spammy comment

Yesterday, this blog received its first spammy comment. Marcus left a note regarding a post published last month when my email address won the UK National Lottery. I guess he just wanted to suggest new outlets for my address's gambling addiction.


Sorry, Marcus, this blog will not be a promotional platform for your online casinos. Interestingly enough, though, this comment is somewhat relevant to the post to which it was destined. Also, Marcus and co did not attempt at flooding all my other posts with the same type of comment. Good effort! This is in keeping with this older post described, by the way.

To this day, I have been restricting comment posting to "registered users", i.e. people willing to identify themselves using a Google, LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, AIM or OpenID account. I also chose to enable word verification (a step which is automatically skipped if you signed in as a blog author, apparently). Last but not least, I set my comment moderation settings to "always" and get notified by email each time someone leaves a comment.

On various occasions, while trying to leave a comment, the whole identification and word verification process struck me as cumbersome and frustrating. Since Marcus's comment only got caught at the comment moderation stage, why not make it easier altogether for normal people to share their thoughts in the comments section?

Let's give it a try: I just changed my settings to allow anyone to post comments to my blog. If I get flooded with spammy comments (which you will hopefully never get to see), I'll switch back to more restrictive settings.

Yay, jsem získala loterie znovu!

Please pardon my broken Czech again.

For those of us not versed in Slavic languages, freetranslation.com provides the following "translation" of the UK National Lottery message I wrote about earlier this week (see this post):

"Your e-mail address he won This is oficiálne notify that the result our pocítace cerpat 844 this on the chosen your name and e-mail address pripojen to tickets Císlo 034-22478556 with poradovým císlem 129, which subsequently won the United Kingdom Lottery large udelování prices in the category. You have been confirmed as vítez category B in the United Kingdom Lottery vylosuje pocítac remíz. Your claim ensemble was rádne predána to this Narodni with the guidelines, which we during handling of prevodem your price 1,000000.00 £ GBP. (One Million United Kingdom pound) to your úcet nominated. Laskave sent the following information of the claims."

I really like the disclaimer accompanying this appalling text:

This translation is ideal for "gisting" purposes, providing a basic understanding of the original text.

Of course, since I don't know any Czech, I may be too quick to blame freetranslation.com, which does indeed provide basic understanding of the message — which I am grateful for. But, as far as I know, "which we during handling of prevodem your price 1,000000.00 £ GBP. (One Million United Kingdom pound) to your úcet nominated" is nothing more than gibberish.

As is often the case, you get what you pay for...

Yay, jsem získala loterie!

I was informed by the following email that I finally won the lottery!

UK NATIONAL LOTTERY

Vaše e-mailová adresa Vyhrál To je oficiálne oznámit, že výsledek našeho pocítace cerpat 844 tohoto dne zvolený Vaše jméno a e-mailovou adresu pripojen k vstupenek Císlo 034-22478556 s poradovým císlem 129, které následne vyhrál Velká Británie Lottery velkou udelování cen v 2. category. You mít bylo potvrzeno, že vítez kategorie B ve Spojeném království Lottery vylosuje pocítac remíz. Vaše tvrzení soubor byl rádne predána k tomuto kancelár s pokyny, které jsme se pri manipulaci s prevodem Vaší cenu 1,000000.00 £ GBP. (One Million Velká Británie libra) na Váš úcet nominován. Laskave poslat níže informace o pohledávky.

Oh no, actually, it's my email address that had the winning ticket. It's been having quite a bit of a gambling problem lately and I've been trying to talk it out of staying up so late playing at multiple online poker tables at once. It recently started buying UK Lotto tickets through a Czech bookmaker, and it seems to be paying off after all! One million British pounds! Yooohooooooooo.

Wait, I hope my email address is willing to share... After all I did for it, trying to keep it spam free and all, it should at least be a couple hundred thousand grateful, don't you think?

Seriously, why would the UK national lottery write to me in Czech???