The return of Lewis

[casadetodd]

Is anyone else getting these Japanese spam comments again? If so, did you get the same ones, or different? I've gotten as many as nine comments to one post in the last few days.

I'll be in Japan week after next, and I'll be watching for anything this could be a publicity campaign for.

EDIT: Someone else has posted that Lewis's last name has been

Comments

[casadetodd]

Though an old chat log being used doesn't fit with the fact that one of the comments I got said "Happy Easter!" and another mentioned April 18. Seems that someone's keeping things right up-to-date.

What's really strange is just the apparently purposelessness of it all. Two-and-a-half years of this crap, to gain...what?

[amuchmoreexotic]

Hmmm, did the posts the comments were originally left on mention Easter or April at all? The chat log isn't being played out in order, and I think the bot may try to do keyword matching.

[casadetodd]

No, they were comments left on the post just previous to this one, "Fashions of the Year 2000..." Nothing on there about Easter or April. http://casadetodd.livejournal.com/264142.html

[amuchmoreexotic]

Hmmm... Don't forget, if it's a bot, it would read all the text on the page, not just the post text. So it could have picked up April from the date on the post. *Except* that when you view that individual entry in your style, it seems the date is rendered in numbers, not words. But the word April appears if you just look at http://casadetodd.livejournal.com/

[casadetodd]

True. I don't know much about bots.

[amuchmoreexotic]

Well, I guess it just looks at all the text on the page, finds a line from its "random" text source, and posts something that matches... So if it was looking at pages which mentioned months, that might produce a vague seasonal effect.

I think that's why people get the idea that the bot is talking to them - what it posts is usually tangentially related to the topic in some way, but never quite makes sense.

Or this particular case might be a coincidence.

[casadetodd]

I've unscreened the comments on that post now, just for fun.