When I first opened my online store, I added a guest book. I soon took it off, for reasons I don't remember any more. I later reinstated it, then removed it again. (You can see this happening in the dates of the first couple of messages.) Finally, earlier this year, I reinstated it and kept it up.

Since then, I have discovered a new type of spammer. It seems that nearly every day, I get several Guest Book entries that are nothing more than advertisements, mainly for assorted drugs. These are put there by people who get paid when you click on their sites. I guess the point is to write the name of their particular drug so many times that my Guest Book will show up on search engines, and they will get clicks.

I usually delete these messages every few days. But when I realized I was going to write about this in the newsletter, I decided to keep most of them up for you all to see. In a few days, I will remove them all again, but if you happen to check out the page every few days, no doubt you will see some more. There is another sort of amusement on the Guest Book page. There are entries that make no sense. I deleted most of them (one entry said nothing but, "Great! I'm really surprised!" with no other reference), but I've kept a few on there for your amusement. Some are cute (Emmy on October 8); others are strange (Slepec on September 1). Check out the page, have a chuckle, and maybe leave a little note yourself!

GUEST BOOK.