It's a shame you don't have a donate button!

This morning I got a comment brimming over with praise for this newsletter ...

It's a shame you don't have a donate button! I'd most certainly donate to this superb blog! I guess for now i'll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.I look forward to new updates and will talk about this website with my Facebook group.Talk soon!

But of course, if you look in the right hand column of this blog you will see you can make a donation to help the mentally ill in Hertfordshire, although unfortunately very few of you bother to do so, and it already seems that this year's total will be well down on last year.

So why hadn't the poster made a donation if he really was so desperate to do so. It is very easy to find out by googling for "It's a shame you don't have a donate button!" and you find that hundreds of bloggers have received an identical message, felt flattered, and allowed the message to pollute their blog. In each case that the comment has been accepted the sender has succeeded in planting a link into your blog!

It is quite clear that the sender is spouting a bucketful of honey-flavoured lies in order to lure you, and people who visit your blog, to his web site. Once you realise this you know that, however innocent it looks, the message cannot be considered to be safe.  I regularly get this kind of message, admittedly not normally so flattering, and if there are any links on them I block them as spam unless I can be sure that they are genuine. As far as I can judge most of them appear to have links with the criminal end of the spectrum

In case you wondered, this is the reason why any comment you make on this blog do not appear immediately. I moderate all messages as the last thing I want is for any comments on the newsletter to be hazardous!