My blogging website is hosted by WordPress, ranked number one in the world of Content  (website) Management Systems, and “powering” (hosting) 30% of the world’s top ten million sites (out of an estimated two billion websites).  I don’t know if my site is in the top ten million but what I do know is that I get my fair share of spam comments.  WordPress does a good job of hiving these comments off into a spam folder and, every now and again, I go into the folder and delete the comments.

This is what I did this morning.  There were sixty-one comments covering the usual range of topics such as invitations to visit porn sites (including shemales and gays), dating sites, an opportunity to buy Ray-Ban sunglasses or Nike Air Jordan shoes, ways to improve the visibility of my site (called Search Engine Optimisation, SEO), opportunities to buy a variety of drugs (Viagra, meth, poppers, Levitra), some comments in Russian (I’ve no idea what they were offering), offers of payday loans, how to earn cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin), and online gambling.  Normally, I just bulk delete the contents of the folder and move on with my life but this morning I decided to check each comment before I deleted.  Two comments caught my attention.  Here’s the first:

From 3win8 jackpot
certainly like your web-site but you need to test the spelling on several of your posts. Many of them are rife with spelling problems and I in finding it very troublesome to tell the truth on the other hand I’ll definitely come again again.
(Followed by a website link that I have removed from this copy and paste.)

It looks as if this is an online gambling invitation but what struck me was the number of grammatical errors in the blurb despite the message appearing to be about making sure my website content is free from grammatical errors.  Maybe that was the intent; the way to get my attention?  I’ll never know.  The comment has now been deleted, permanently.

The second comment is far more interesting.  Here it is:

From LeolaJuicy
Hello. I see that you don’t update your site too often. I know that writing content is time consuming and boring. But did you know that there is a tool that allows you to create new posts using existing content (from article directories or other blogs from your niche)? And it does it very well. The new articles are high quality and pass the copyscape test. Search in google and try: ParaFraser’s (not the real name) tools
(Again, followed by a website link that I have removed from this copy and paste.)

This one intrigued me.  It seems to be saying that there’s a website where you can submit a block of text copied from an existing website and the text will be used to create an alternative version that says the same thing but in a different way.  I call that paraphrasing but, apparently, it’s known as spinning the original text.

I couldn’t resist the temptation to dig deeper and I did as directed and quickly discovered the site.  It horrified me.  It’s as bad as, or even worse than, the essay writing services I wrote about last May.  Spinners, those who paraphrase the works of others, do so for profit.  Here are extracts from the spinner’s website I found, complete with many examples of bad grammar.  I’m not even going to bother to paraphrase these extracts but I have replaced the correct name of the tool with the fictitious name, ParaFrase.  I’ve no wish to publicise either the service or the tool.

Best article rewriter in the market

ParaFrase is first multi-languages article spinner that actually understands that words have different meanings, for you as customer that means that you will be able to create human readable articles with single click of your mouse.

With ParaFrase you can easily create and spin articles in these languages: English, Spanish, French and Italian which makes ParaFrase one of the best article spinners available (according to SEO and marketing forums it is the best article spinner out there.)

This high level of rewriting ensures that Google and Copyscape* can’t detect your content while still remaining human readable!

* Copyscape is a website that detects plagiarism.

Original Sentence: Nobody has been arrested by the police officers, but the suspect is being interrogated by them.

Automatic Rewrite: Law enforcement are interrogating the defendant, although they have not detained anybody. (Spot the error.)

Make money with ParaFrase

Freelance content writers generally charge per word. A good writer can usually charge somewhere between $1.00 and $1.50 per 100 words and can probably write 750-1000 words per hour. That works out from anywhere to $7.50/hour to $15/hour. But that’s not even including the time spent acquiring new writing clients. So how did I turn this $10/hour job into a $25/hour job?

This spinner creates unique human readable articles in minutes. Just search the article you need at in any article directory for example ezine, copy it and paste in ParaFrase and rewrite. Make couple of edits if required and you have ready to sell article! You can sell your content at XXX and YYY. All work can be done in 5 minutes!

There is no mention of the legality, or otherwise, of spinning an article and then selling it as your own work.  Basically, that’s theft.  The spinner offers a 3-day free trial and then requires a monthly subscription of, as I found out from another website, $49.95/month (about £39/month).  I was tempted to sign up for the trial and see what the ParaFrase tool would do with some of my blogs but, in the end, thought better of it.  I was also tempted to sign up on Copyscape and see if I’ve been plagiarised but, again, thought better of it.  Life’s too short.

It worries me that not only can you contract an essay writing service to write an essay and then pass it off as your own work, but also you can find and download the original work of another author, recast the content and then sell it on as your own work.  Soon, there will people who obtain first-class degrees in literature and who then go on to publish a best-selling novel, all without being able to string more than five words together!

It’s a rum old world we live in.

From the previous essay writing services blog:

And now, the sequel:

(^_^)