Ummm… Rob? Why are you spamming our blogs?

Wellll… actually I’m not. Directly that is. Somebody else is under my name though.

Gotta note from a friend the other day saying they enjoyed my blog, and by the way, why WAS it down with a note from WordPress about a Terms of Service violation?

Being that this is a non-monetized freebie blog that I pay attention to once a month or so whether there’s demand or not, I actually hadnt noticed. But I dutifully attempted to login and saw a note from the WordPress guys that said my blog was archived or suspended for a probable TOS violation, and it gave me a contact form to let them know if I thought they’d hit it in error.

Given that despite my other faults too numerous to catalog here I’m still something of a Boy Scout when it comes to TOS… I fired off a quick inquiry to the WordPress contact provided. They informed me that they’d received reports of the following comment being spammed to other blogs:

“$$ Free $$ check out my blog and earn cash https://robjones3030.wordpress.com/ $$ Free $$ I’m Rob Jones running for president and I approve this message Free $$”

Well, it didnt take a brain surgeon to figure out what’d happened (which is a good thing, cause I don’t know any brain surgeons that owe me favors). I serve as a moderator on a couple of webmaster forums, and a little spammer I’d unceremoniusly tossed outta one for poor behavior decided to invest several days of work spamming other sites using my name, the goal being to get my site shut down for a TOS violation.

Gotta love the logic. He spent literally days sending out messages pretending to be me, and yes, WordPress shut down my freebie, non-monetized site, which I didnt even notice until someone pointed it out.

I then spent about a minute sending an explanatory note to WordPress and they had my site back up immediately. Gotta appreciate the poetic justice … he gets back at me by wasting days of his time and I invest 60 seconds to fix it.

Anyway, kudos to Mark at WordPress for immediately correcting the issue. I’m sure they get their share of BS excuses. He took a look and figured out what the problem was with a quick glance. WP makes a nice resource, and I’m sure they get their share of real abuse.

Meanwhile…
S’pose spam-boy has figured out which of us lost more time on the deal? Naah, probably not.

Gotta love internet trolls, they’re so cute when they get angry. :-p