My blog has a “Contact Chuck Miller” link, where I often receive messages from people about my blog, or who want to contact me personally. I get that. It’s all good.
Unfortunately, the “Contact Chuck Miller” link also draws a considerable amount of spam and scammers and salebots. Example – some time ago, someone used my “Contact Chuck Miller” link to claim that I had stolen some of their photos and used them in my blog, and that I needed to click a Google Docs link as proof of this. Ah, but the Google Docs link was actually a link to malware. Nice try, scammer. I like the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” but I wasn’t born yesterday.
So speaking of yesterday, I received this “Contact Chuck Miller” message from someone named Kelly Davis.
“Hi There, Just a heads-up that I believe the word “Pregent” is spelled wrong on your website.“
Now I’m not so vainglorious that I would brush off if someone pointed out a spelling error on my blog. Trust me, if I wrote “juntaposition” when I really meant “juxtaposition,” and someone emailed me and pointed it out, I would thank them and fix the mistake at the next possible time.
Okay. I don’t remember using the word “Pregent” recently. A quick word search in my blog showed that I did indeed use the word “Pregent” twice in the past twelve years, but both instances – this one and this one – were written ELEVEN years ago, and the word “Pregent” actually referred to Jay Pregent, an old friend of mine from back in the day.
Okay, so I’ve got someone deep-diving my old blog posts for spelling and grammar. Kinda stalky, but…
I read the rest of the message.
“I had a couple of errors on my site before I started using a service to monitor for them. There are a few sites that do this but we like SpellingReport.com and ErrorSearch.com.“
Oh, and those websites had hyperlinks in them. Whether they were to those specific dot-com sites, or to malware sites, I didn’t bother to look. I took the hyperlinks out before I posted them in this blog.
Wow. Is that the best you can do, Kelly Davis, if that is your real name?
Listen, sister, I can handle a blog. Have done so for more than 12 years. And the last thing I need is some spambot who felt like going through my blog, finding what MIGHT be a spelling error, and using it to promote some Grammarly knock-off?
Don’t mess with my education. Just because I went to twelve different elementary and secondary schools before I reached college, doesn’t mean I didn’t at least absorb a little phonics in my lifetime.
And I will also attest to the ability to read. Trust me. I am a proud graduate of the Evelyn Woodhead Sped Riddin’ Course.
But the big thing is, I gotta thank you for this, Kelly Davis, whoever you are.
I really didn’t have a topic for today’s blog post.
Until you sent out that little spam-scam message to me. So thanks for that, at least. 😀
Chuck The Writer 