Unexpected visitors to our site
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2007-03-22 11:41:38 - Graham EllisOvernight, I received an email from someone how came to our site for a most unusual reason ...
"I wonder if you can help me. I have recently started receiving dozens of bizarre emails such as the one below. When I Googled some of the sentences, such as, “To put the top hat on it, he quickly assembled a committee ....†I keep coming up with your blog."
My correspondent went on to ask for my help in getting these emails that she was receiving stopped - erroneously considering that we have some control over them. But that assumption is common enough, so let me share my explanation of what's going on here:
People who send spam don't want it to get stopped by your automated email filters, so they make each of their messages different and unrecognisable by cutting in pieces of text taken at random from other web site with which they have no association at all. So the spam reaches you because it's unique - it has text on it that's been stolen (as it's my copyright and used without my approval) from my site.
I would love to be able to stop these people using my text, but that's pretty impractical ... the best I can do is to answer occasional emails that I get like this and help you understand what is happening. Once your email address is on the list of such people, I fear you'll need to get rid of it with improved filters (ask your ISP if you need help) as requests to delete your name will be pretty ineffective.