Though I host my blog on my own domain, I use WordPress to manage it. The plug-ins do a nice job of restricting and corralling spam comments, and I manually delete anywhere from two to six of those every day. They are generally in Cyrillic text, or occasionally Arabic, though the ones in English are equally incomprehensible. Today, for instance, a short one in English read, “In it something is also to me it seems it is excellent idea. I agree with you.” Perhaps it was agreeing that (as I wrote in my previous entry) human beings don’t make sense.

Another one read, “Awesome article,” and was followed by a link that I will never click on.

For a long time, my home e-mail (also hosted on my domain) was refreshingly spam-free, but of late I have been getting a few a day, even though I have software that should theoretically screen those out. Instead, it screens out my credit card statements. Luckily, I always look at my spam list before I delete all of them. But my credit card bank has sold my account to another bank, and perhaps that will fix the spam problem once I’m getting my automatic notifications from another email account.

I have a Yahoo! email that I use for anything I don’t really need, like frequent buyer accounts and various memberships. Yahoo! also does a nice job of corralling spam. I get anywhere from 50 to 100 spam emails there every day. They warn me that my account is overdue and will be closed, or that my speeding tickets are putting me at risk of jail time (I don’t have a car). Some of them offer me marvelous prizes or huge sums of money for things that do not concern me.

I do have a Google account. I use it for my Google accounts, like Home, Docs, and Photos. I get no spam on that. None. Nobody wishes me well, addresses me in Russian or Chinese, threatens me, or offers me riches beyond my wildest dreams. It’s kind of sad.

And then there’s my iCloud account, where I get mail only from my health insurance broker, because I didn’t pay attention when I was corresponding with him. No spam. Only Apple knows I have it.

I do buy lottery tickets from time to time, but they don’t have my email address, and the most I have ever won is seven dollars.

What I’m saying is if anyone ever really gave me an unlikely amount of money, threatened me with jail time, or made me a marvelous offer for free pillows, I would not know. Serendipity will have to pass me by in the darkness of the spam buckets.