When you run a social bookmarking website, expect lots of spammers. Oodles. Huge piles. Gazillions.

At Zoomit, we delete a spammer’s account. This is time-consuming, although less so than deleting individual posts. We also have a filter that catches at least 90% of non-Canadian submissions; the eyeball test catches most of the others for manual deletion.

Without further ado, here are the nine types of spammers we are pleased to delete…

The no speak-a English spammer. I guess these spammers speak so little English that they don’t realize that Zoomit is for Canadian content only. They can’t read the big, red warning sign. They don’t notice all the English language submissions. They can’t tell by having to select a province the story relates to. The big red maple leaf doesn’t give it away. The map of Canada obviously stuns them. The name of the site – Zoomit Canada – is obviously not helpful. You have to admire such determined spammers who are so eager to have their submissions deleted.

The two-headed no speak-a English spammer. Yes, this dude signed up for two accounts, one male and one female to spam us.  No English and no understanding of gender.

The stupid foreigner spammer. OK, these guys obviously speak English. So why are they spamming a Canadian website?  Both of them should have been able to read the warning sign on the submissions page, and both of them should have been able to tell the difference between states and provinces in the form.  Hands up everyone who thinks Chicago is in Canada.

The stupid foreigner spammer…with integrity! Does their integrity excuse their stupidity or their lack of integrity?  Oh come on, this one is precious.  A spammer with self-proclaimed integrity.  You have to admire the hutzpah as you hit the “delete” button.

The foreign email spammer. If you plan to spam an all-Canadian website, maybe a UK email address won’t raise a red flag.  Or maybe it will.

The mass spammer. Much like the mass-murderer or the serial killer, but without a bunch of messy bodies strewn about the website.

The branded spammer. Hint, if you place just the name of a product, that’s a pretty easy give-away that you are not submitting something to share with people but something you want to sell to people.  On a classifieds website, that would be cool.  On a news website, that is spam.

The advertising spammer. If a submission about a product is not bad enough, how about a submission that even reads like  an ad, complete with a price and a call to action?  So here is a question for you - would you hire an SEO company that reached you by spamming you?

And for the grand prize, would you hire an SEO company that lies to you - openly! - while spamming you?  And can almost write in English?

And here is my personal favourite…

The exceedingly careless spammer. Uh…need I say more?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.