My Telegraph is held up by Texas Hold 'Em spam

 by Martin Belam, 19 September 2007

With impeccably bad timing, on Saturday morning, just as I was looking for some links and URLs to go with my currybetdotnet piece about my Press Gazette piece about My Sun and My Telegraph, I came across the front page of My Telegraph being completely spammed out by poker ads. Out of 28 posts on display, all but two were spam posts about poker.

My Telegraph spammed

The person or spambot responsible had even been tagging their spam diligently, so that the My Telegraph tag cloud was carrying its own version of the poker spam.

My Telegraph poker tag cloud

It is all cleaned up now, of course, but not before causing some ripples amongst the community.

One user wondered whether The Telegraph could better apply the perceived zeal for moderation of comments, to the moderation of the spam.

A few users, however, speculated that the spam wasn't the work of actual poker-promoting-people, but instead stemmed from one of the site's regular trolls.

My Telegraph poker complaint

He/she is now, apparently in a Harry Potter style, referred to with the accronym HWMNBN to avoid giving the oxygen of publicity that trolls crave.

Some of the regulars, though, seemed distinctly unimpressed with the whole thing altogether.

My Telegraph sarcasm

1 Comment

All good things occur with the unexpected and the apparantly negative, for then we make the required adjustments, like when I had to purchase the appropriate anti-virus and anti-spyware software for my PC, which greatly improved the Net experience, among other things. Even pests serve a purpose.

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