Bryan Fleming - Blog Spam Whore Extraordinaire

Written by John Cow on March 5th, 2008

Spam spam spam, if there’s one thing nobody likes, its spam. Unfortunately some people thrive by bothering, pestering and misleading others. Bryan Fleming is one of those people. Yes, a Blog Spam Whore Extraordinaire in fact, who can’t help himself but to post the same old comment on any blog he can find, whilst using at least ten different aliases for himself. We say at least ten, because we got tired trying to find more of his bullshit comments.

We’re willing to make a bet with you guys that at least 80% of you has had the following comment in one of your blog posts, and we’ve seen plenty of bloggers reply to the comment, all tricked into believing this was an actual interested visitor:

I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.

I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

Some bloggers get extra lucky and get two at the same time!

spamwhore.jpg



So what does Mr Fleming do it for? Probably for getting backlinks to his network of sites, thus increasing PR and selling links (in the footers), which just happen to look like more spam links (loans and mortgages etc) and making a few pennies with Adsense.

Nothing wrong with making a few extra bob online, but if you’re clever enough to come up with a “comment” that gets through the AKISMET spam filter, why are you silly enough to use the same line over and over and even leaving those duplicate comments on the same blog posts? And what’s with the pretending to be someone else, every time you leave that comment?

A sample of the sites we found that are owned by Brian “Schizo” Fleming:

  • http://www.everydaymarketingideas.com/
  • http://www.directmarketingnewsline.com/
  • http://www.goodcustomerserviceblog.com/
  • http://www.easynegotiationtechniques.com/
  • http://www.personalfinanceblogarticles.com/
  • http://www.investingworldtoday.com/
  • http://www.estateplanningcareer.com/
  • http://www.businessmanagementlife.com/
  • http://www.why-outsource.com/
  • http://www.productivityplanner.com/

Spam is bad, bryan_fleming@hotmail.com / bfleming98@gmail.com. Surely you wouldn’t want your email address online and indexed by spambots so they start bombarding you with useless and time-consuming crap? We all spend countless hours a month wading through the spam box to see if we didn’t accidentally miss a real comment because of people like you. Anyway, we’ve blocked “Matt Hanson”, “Allen Taylor”, “Mike Harmon”, “Chris Moran”, “Tim Ramsey”, “Tina Russell”, “Jason Rakowski”, “Aaron Wakling”, “Susan Kishner” and many more of your non-existent clones, and we hope that our diligent readers will have a look at their comment section to chuck your comments right in the bin, where they belong.

Oh, and thanks for being the inspiration for today’s post, we couldn’t have done it without you.

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67 Responses to “Bryan Fleming - Blog Spam Whore Extraordinaire”

  1. links from TechnoratiUnfortunately some people thrive by bothering, pestering and misleading others. Bryan Fleming is one of those people. Yes, a Blog Spam Whore Extraordinaire in fact, who can’t help himself but to post the same old comment on … Read the original:Bryan Fleming - Blog Spam Whore Extraordinaire

  2. LOL says:

    I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.

  3. Steven says:

    Spam is also one of the less attractive features about using WordPress as it seems to attract unwanted spam, where most blogs that are self coded, don’t seem to get all these random spam posts or trackbacks.

  4. Mr. Rajawang says:

    Argghhh I hate spam too! Got 30 spam comments everyday especially P0rn and medicine spam comments.. totally hate it! :evil:

    Mr. Rajawang’s last blog post..My Internet Income-February 2008 Income Report.

  5. Wisdom says:

    I took a look at some of the sites he has up. I think it’s funny how he uses a different picture of a guy or a girl at the top of each blog. He must be pretty clever to bypass that spam filter.

  6. MyBlogLove says:

    So, till now we must STOP to interesting to click people who comment bullshit, :evil: and

    doesn’t have relevancy with the posting. :?:

    i am lucky for being newbie, there just a little blogger or reader come to my blog and do comment. :arrow:

    not like you…

    comment to backlink is not always bad if……

    yes, if your comment relevant with the topic.

    so, there is ethic not written in front of us…

    or maybe the SPAM he make just because he can’t english well like me… :smile:

    What ever, I HATE SPAM!!!

    stop SPAM! :idea:

    MyBlogLove’s last blog post..Facebook submit New ‘Veteran’ Squad

  7. I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you. - No really I did!

    Think Like An SOB’s last blog post..Lesson 1 - It’s Not Your Keywords Dummy!

  8. Callie says:

    We’ve got one of his posts on our blog. I figured it was spam when I approved it, but since I wasn’t 100% I just cleaned the link.

    Asshat people eh?

  9. Kenny says:

    I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.

    :D

  10. What happens if someone leaves a comment and their name happens to be “Matt Hanson”, “Allen Taylor”, “Mike Harmon”, “Chris Moran”, “Tim Ramsey”, “Tina Russell”, “Jason Rakowski”, “Aaron Wakling” or “Susan Kishner”?

    Could you possibly miss some good comments on the blog?

    Tycoon Blogger’s last blog post..Songbird. Mozilla’s Media Player

  11. Kramer auto Pingback[...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]

  12. Tom Beaton says:

    You go Cow! Expose the evil spammer!

    Tom Beaton’s last blog post..Essential Online Advertising Terminology

  13. Well done guys! These people should be shot.

    I’ve been getting one a lot from info@hyperwebenable.com pushing web hosting using your own domain. I already have my own domain! Any good ideas for dealing with these bastards?

  14. Jim says:

    Go get’em Cow!

    By the way… I just found your site on technorati and… :lol:

    Jim’s last blog post..New Website Design, Contest Approaches!

  15. Mike Huang says:

    What I did was I took off the “DO FOLLOW” thing for my comments and I just deleted that plugin. I hope after deleting it, spammers won’t get a part from comments unless of course it doesn’t work that way.

    -Mike

    Mike Huang’s last blog post..Guest Posting’s True Infinite Power

  16. Eli says:

    Expose this mongrel. Everyone go through your blogs and remove his comments if there are any. Lowest form of scum in the webmaster world: spammers, and scrapers.

    Personally I don’t run the right kind of niche to get this kind of spam, but I do remove comments if they have a spammy-looking site in the URL.

    Eli’s last blog post..Google AdSense Policy Agreement

  17. Si Philp says:

    I’ll put money on it that someone has written a peice of software that automates posting comments like above using a different alias and link everytime :evil:

    So this would result in the work being done automatically which is a right pain in the ass for us webmasters :sad:

    AKISMET is does do a fantastic job but if someone is posting what looks like an innocent comment then chances are it will get through unless the users ip address or url is blacklisted?

  18. Awwww…and here I thought I’d just gained five new readers that just happened to find my blog amonger the 1,648,195,453,943 other on technorati :razz:

    Let’s hope the spambots doesn’t find his emails in your post…

    Dennis Bjørn Petersen’s last blog post..$150 Laptop Is Still Alive

  19. Pete Moore says:

    And there’s me thinking finally someone who appreciates my writing talents.

    I got a matt hanson comment yesterday creativeadvertisingblog.com, whois shows as bryan fleming.

    Thanks for the heads up JC.

    Pete Moore

    Pete Moore’s last blog post..How A Liason With A Cow Increased My Website Traffic

  20. Jason says:

    Ya, I posted this same thing in the Digital Point forums asking wtf this was. Guess I’m not the only one who got it, lol. I would have approved it, if he didn’t comment twice like that, trying to pose as two different people, lol.

    Jason’s last blog post..World Gone Wild

  21. Joe Tech says:

    I think that jackass actually got me with the first one, but then I saw several more across my 3 blogs. What amazes me is that he was creative enough to think this up, but didn’t use that creativity to come up with something productive. If all the ingenious spam tricks were applied to productive sites, the world (wide web) would be a much better place.

    Joe Tech’s last blog post..My Sony Vaio VGN-SZ430N Hard Drive Crashed and How I Fixed It

  22. mister muggles says:

    Maybe he just hired somebody and just don’t know about it :?:

  23. MyBlogLove says:

    hi….

    good morning…. :smile:

    its morning in indonesia…. :grin:

    come on every body…..

    MOVE on ANTI-SPAM campaign….

    where the US President candidates ??

    are they anti-SPAM too?? :evil: :evil: :evil:

    hehe :evil: :evil:

    sorry, Out Of Topic

    please do not add me to blacklist SPAMERS :grin:

    i just wanna say good morning to John Cow Reader specially from Indonesia…

    :razz:

    MyBlogLove’s last blog post..Islam and US after Bush

  24. Neil Duckett says:

    Brilliant Cow. I had a Chris Moran special this week …. it has since been deleted.

    Neil Duckett’s last blog post..Beer And Milk = Bilk

  25. Matt says:

    I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.

    Matt’s last blog post..Is the RIAA really dealing with filesharing?

  26. Matt says:

    It says I’m from Australia!

    Matt’s last blog post..Is the RIAA really dealing with filesharing?

  27. coolingstar9 says:

    We should not follow their footsteps, I learn something new today.

    Have a nice day.

    coolingstar9’s last blog post..Learn someting from good or bad news

  28. I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.

    Work From Home Jobs’s last blog post..Article Marketer Review: I’m Very Disappointed

  29. Jon says:

    Lol. Funny post. I’m part of a small Poker Blogging group, and we often get exactly the same spam comments advertising the latest online casino offers. Very annoying. Especially when their bots go crazy and add 10 comments at once. Oh well.

    P.S. I won’t be adding your RSS feed to my newsreader. But have asked to be notified of updates via email.

    Jon’s last blog post..Don’t be a Stranger!

  30. Syed Balkhi says:

    haha this inspired me so much i am going to be linking to this post in my latest post.

    Syed Balkhi’s last blog post..Second update with the contest

  31. [...] too. In fact, let’s experiment right now - these are the bloggers that are the chosen ones. How many of them do you think will [...]

  32. [...] But i started getting alot of these, so i knew it was spam. Ofcourse i didn’t take any real action other than blocking the email address and the ip it was coming from. One of the other bloggers that i read actually went ahead and do some research on this spammer. They expose the spammer, and his sites along with the email to public. Read it now, to blacklist these emails. [...]

  33. Somehow I find it hard to believe it is just one person…more likely a f.leet of them working as one. Who knows…can’t stand these spammers…ugh

    -Raymond

  34. This is amazing! there’s people o just don’t know how to do it!!! if you don’t its better to stay quiet than to do this !$”%”!!! Well what can we do rather than have a laugh at this stupid guy fooling himself…

    thanks to John Cow on is posts and content!!!

    Estevão Pape’s last blog post..PTBux

  35. Rajaie says:

    Try searching google for this:

    I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

    Seems like this is popular on the internet….

  36. Kramer auto Pingback[...] list or newsletter. I write a short newsletter… Topics: Guest Bloggers, Traffic Tips Bryan Fleming - Blog Spam Whore Extraordinaire - 2 days ago Spam spam spam, if there’s one thing nobody likes, its spam. Unfortunately some [...]

  37. Frank C says:

    I got one of these. I left the comment but changed the link to point to one of my niche blogs. :mrgreen: :twisted:

    Frank C’s last blog post..Blogger Interview: Jenn of MixedMetaphor.Net

  38. Jake Cohen says:

    OMG! What a coincidence! I just read this post earlier today and right now (midnight) he just wrote the post. At first I was happy about another comment, but then I remembered your post. I went back to your blog to check it out and see if it matched up, sure enough it did! Here is the exact message:

    “I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you. Chris Moran”

    URL: “everydaymarketingideas.com”

    Thanks so much John Cow! This was incredible useful, and I’m thankful that you took the time to write this post. Every person who realizes this the better, this guy shouldn’t be able to profit from spamming.

    GREAT STUFF!

    Sincerely, Jake Cohen

    http://www.talkprice.net

    Jake Cohen’s last blog post..Recently Aquired Domains

  39. Jon says:

    I received something even more stupid today.

    I wanted to take part in the dofollow movement as I’ve been making good use of it myself. However, all the spammer could be bothered to write was:

    > Thank you.

    > hhttp://www.xyz.com

    How can he possibly expect me to approve such a useless comment?

    Jon’s last blog post..Don’t be a Stranger!

  40. links from TechnoratiUGH.John Cowand BloggerNoob had mentioned them in their previous posts as well….But now I am just really annoyed by them. You know, you work really hard blogging and with your blog and content and then all of the sudden when you think you are being left really

  41. Jason says:

    I found your site after doing a search for some comments that “Chris Moran” left on our site…

    I don’t think it’s the same person. It could be multiple idiots seeing what he/she’s doing, then going, “Hey, let me try this technique (since I can’t afford real advertising).”

    I like the way they use first and last names. What person would post their first and last names in a blog comment, anyway?

    Nice graphics! I like the car.

  42. JC - I love it! One of my sites e-mails had 50,000 e-mails in the inbox. 49,995 were spam. In fact, the amount of e-mails pushed my site into the red and it was suspended. :twisted:

    I love it when spammers get exposed or they get fined. You obviously went to a lot of work to expose this guy! Good job!

    Mohamed Bhimji’s last blog post..Who Is This Yaro Starak Guy?

  43. Sohaib Athar says:

    I found your site on google while searching for this Matt Hanson guy, and only read this post. Keep up the average work. I did not add your RSS feed to any reader, and will probably not read any more posts from you.

    (That hurts, right?)

    But seriously, I was googling for the guy’s name, whose comment was actually caught by Akismet (yay!) - As an occasional blogger, I don’t get a lot of traffic on my blog (*hint*) and therefore, treasure any commentators that spend a few seconds on my blog, which makes people like me a prime target for spammers like Matt, who use what I have come to call “automatic electronic ego massagers”. I was going to write a post about it, but since you have already done that, so I’ll go back to work now :-D

    Sohaib Athar’s last blog post..How I Got PTCL to Upgrade my Bandwidth

  44. Alex says:

    Thanks for this post - I was almost hoodwinked by one of these phoney comments. Akismet did pick the comment up, but I thought it was a mistake. Now I know that Akismet is pretty damn sharp.

    If Akismet thinks something is spam - it most probably is.

    All the best,

    Alex

    Alex’s last blog post..How to Win an Election

  45. Frank C says:

    @ Alex - Don’t count on Akismet being right. There is a serious false positive with it. For example, if you were to make somebody mad they could mark your comment as spam and that would prevent you from leaving comments on any blog. I wrote about this back in December when it happened to me and it turned out that I was far from alone in this experience.

    Frank C’s last blog post..Niche Blog Content Ideas and Experiences

  46. Robb says:

    I’m glad to see that someone else is on to him. I realized it was spam when he hit my blog, but didn’t realize it was an alias. I also did a little writeup, inspired by his spam, about the ethics of spamming (link is above.)

  47. Daniel says:

    What? You’re giving away Plegming’s e.mail addresses? Next thing that we know, you’ll post something like this:

    Bryan C Fleming (b Dec 1971)

    41565 Arthur Ct

    Belleville, MI 48111-3406

    734-697-3208 (land-line)

    734-564-1671 (mobile)

  48. Daniel says:

    A Wired story from ‘97 suggest that Phlegming has been in the business of spamming for quite a while:

    http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1997/12/8852

    Meanwhile, other links are to pages that have Phlegming later posturing as an opponent of spam.

  49. links from TechnoratiWow… you really can tweet from within Lotus Notes 8. IBM and Web 2.0? That’s too much for some folks to fathom Today at 5:04 tired from standing in a server room all day Today at 3:57Bryan Fleming - Blog Spam Whore Extraordinaire | John Cow dot ComMonday at 23:53 I didn’t realize blogging took so much out of you… time for crash in bed. Monday at 15:18 Thinks enterprise software is more or less commoditised. Monday at 0:54 Trying to see if Twitter really can change your Facebook

  50. [...] apparently they would. As it turns out, Jason Rakowski is not even a real person. As John Cow points out, this is an elaborate spam network perpetrated by some dude named Brian Fleming. Jason Rakowski is [...]

  51. I just received a comment on my blog from “Tim Ramsey” a quick search revealed the true reason for his post. Luckily my Akismet tossed it were it belonged, to the spam box.

    You can add mydebtreliefblog.com to your list!

    Thanks John

  52. Thanks for the expose! He (Jason Rakowski) almost got me until I did a little Googling and realized he’d made the same innocent sounding blog post all across the net. Got to love it.

  53. Jason says:

    While you guys are posting addresses and phone numbers, I hope that it’s the same person doing the spamming, and not some guy who’s unfortunate to have the same name. :sad:

  54. Just received another spam comment this time from a “Mike Harmon”

    Site: accountingtips4you.com.

    On this site he claims to be working towards a CPA. It includes a photo undoubtedly not his own.

  55. May C says:

    Thanks, Marco Lombardini for the heads up on this accountingtips4you.com. Just got a comment/question that Akismet identified as spam. In the comment, he was asking about where I got the theme for my blog (not my palmdiscovery one) but another wordpress.com one that should have been obvious since you can’t import themes in the wordpress.com blogs.

    These spammers are getting smarter. And then another spammer was sending spam that was related to what my site was about but after reading it, it was obvious it was spam. They just don’t stop.

    May Cs last blog post..More FREE software from PDAMill and Eight New Games Released!

  56. Aric McKeown says:

    I was look for more information on this jackass. Akismet caught the comment, but I wanted to hunt his info down. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting.

  57. links from Technoratimoderation and let a few unrecognized spam comments slip through. That’s what I get for not requesting DNA samples from commenters. I must thank my ever vigilant husband for sniffing out the comments and sending me to a most enlightening articlehere

  58. [...] As I don’t have a nice writing style, and it was marked as spam, I did a quick google on this one, and found a nice post here : bryan fleming is a spam whore extraordinaire. [...]

  59. Matt says:

    Yeah, new to blogging (about a month), I was suspicious of ole Mark Harmon’s compliment post. Thanks for confirming my suspicion!

    —Matt—

    Matt's lastest..Who Should I Vote For?
  60. Patrick says:

    Hey John,

    I received this in my spam box today along with the accompanying links.

    “Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.”

    Allen Taylor

    I was suspicious and checked out the linked site and noted that the format of the articles seemed like a skimmer but a little slicker. Checking further I found your article. Bingo! Now we know that he is still out there.

    Thanks for the heads-up.

    Patrick

  61. Tim Manni says:

    John,

    I found your blog after googling “Acountingtips4you.com.” That link accompanied a generic comment by one “Mike Harmon” left on my company’s blog — blog.hsh.com. What’s hilarious is you mentioned another one of his alias’ “Aaron Wakling,” we def. got a message from him once too.

    I really enjoyed this post and I’ll be back again.

    Thanks,

    Tim

  62. S Martini says:

    He hit two of my sites. Almost had me fooled. Thanks for posting this.

  63. bob@extractor.com says:

    Uhh you do know that this guy was the founder of extractor marketing over a decade ago? Same software, different medium.

  64. Rob Fleming says:

    Sadly enough this F%&King scum bag…. who is of no relation to me has graduated to copyright infringement along with spamming and his other long list of dubious online practices. While running a backlink report on a website i am promoting i came across a website “addictionrecoveryblog-com” that had ripped off one of my promotion copywritten articles published on Ezarticles. i ran a whois it seems that there is a long list of crappy scrap sites this guy owns. After viewing the actual site my link software report I found that this POS had merely scraped my article which was published on 2/2/2009 on Ezarticles, and posted it on his blog site without my “By line” wrapped around his adsense ads!

    At this point i have contacted Ezarticles and Google to report he copyright violation, and hopefully i will win a small victory over this retards theft of my hard work!

    Any ideas on how to legally retaliate against this site will be truly appreciated!

    Thanks

  65. Wisdom says:

    I took a look at some of the sites he has up. I think it's funny how he uses a different picture of a guy or a girl at the top of each blog. He must be pretty clever to bypass that spam filter.