Spam, the voices around us.

I am the only volunteer Community Help Forum Moderator for Squarespace. The forum administrator, a Squarespace staff member, asked me to be the moderator some years ago. She liked my responses to many questions and problems posted. I, maybe not thinking it through, said yes but glad I did.

My job or function, whatever word fits the best, is not hard for the most part. I help people with website design questions, hints, and problems. Now and then I need to diffuse a situation and calm a disgruntled website owner who feels shorted by customer service or some design element the site has or doesn’t have. Squarespace recently purchased Google’s Domain Service and has moved millions of domains to Squarespace's in-house management. With that many domains, it can be expected that some will merge with issues causing users to need help. This has been the case, but it is settling down now.

I also delete spam from any forum by marking the poster as a Spammer. I have not needed to do that often until the last two months.

We have been inundated with spam, hundreds of posts every day, posted by tens of bot spammers. They posted all around the clock for some weeks, until I figured out what time of day it happened the most and I was waiting for them. I can see when someone is in a certain thread, search for their screen name, see when they joined, and if just some minutes before I kick them out and delete their posts. It took weeks of fighting them but now the spam has mysteriously quit. I am thankful for that.

It could have been a bad result for our members if their purpose for spamming had been fulfilled completely. They sneak into and post on a busy website when possible to increase the hit count to whatever dark website they run. They fish (phish) for information, password hints, credit card numbers, and any information they can turn into revenue for themselves. The posts usually contain a fake phone number to an airline for reservations, or to financial software such as Quicken or a site to buy bitcoin. The promise in this spam post is you can bypass the wait time and reach customer service immediately. This is of course a lie.

I believe our members are sophisticated enough to recognize spam for what it is. It is junk posts and junk mail designed to take someone down a road they don’t want to go on, and pick their pockets. Whatever they want, it comes down to malicious intent. All lies.

This brings me to the question, why is this type of stuff called Spam in the first place?

I can answer that for you visually:

The world contains lots of Spammers, they are like a virus, inhabiting the arteries of the internet. The unseen world, the spiritual world also has Spammers. They are voices all around us that speak harm, deceit, and discouragement. Those voices attack us and tell us we are forgotten and unloved. They make us afraid and anxious when they tell us the world would not be full of evil if there was a God. All lies. We know who is behind those lies.

When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

“Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.”

(2 Corinthians 14-15)

“For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.” (James 3:16)

But God is truth and says something different. He tells us we are loved by Him our Father. He tells us we have a future, one of hope, and that His purpose for us and this world will come to be and He warns us. He tells us to be wise.

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17)

So the next time the forces of darkness send you Spam because they want to destroy you spiritually and emotionally remember that God loves you, listen to him when he says he sent His son to die for you, and His promises are true. Eventually, the voices, the devil’s spam will be silenced, but God’s word will always ring true, if you listen to it.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” (John 10:4-5)

Derrick