I had a problem with my blog a few days ago. While troubleshooting, I temporarily disabled some plug-ins until I was able to isolate and resolve the issues. When I re-enabled them, I did not realize that I needed to reconfigure my “captcha” plug-in used to verify users on my contact page.
I realized this rather quickly. Within 12 hours, I had received 3 different spam messages trying to get me to click on some sketchy links purportedly sent from gmail for some sketchy product or scam. After the 3rd one, I was thinking of taking the CONTACT me page down altogether because all I ever receive are SPAM messages (plus 1 or 2 critical comments a year). But I have this fantasy, that someday, someone who actually knows me might want to reach out.
So I checked my AntiSPAM filter and reconfigure the Google captcha plug-in and now am back to being SPAM bot free.
Here’s what I know.
The Internet is dominated by scammers, bots, imposters and clickbait. It is ubiquitous. With AI, it’s going to get even worse as the creations and replication of scamming becomes when easier. So I know it and as long as I use the Internet, I need to expect this.
It’s like knowing that fish in the ocean are all contaminated with mercury. Or that you should never drink water from untreated sources, according to the US government. Or that micro-plastics are everywhere including inside of our bodies.
I’m not worried about any of this. I do what I can to minimize my exposure. I fit gets bad enough, I’ll opt out (of either the particular item or of this world).
For today, my spam filters, my water filters and not eating fish are working well enough.