Stephanie Eyre and Mindshare, You Can Stop Spamming Now

Who is Stephanie “Steph” Eyre? It’s hard to say, as she doesn’t exist. She did happen to comment here today, albeit on a post about a year old. That’s always the first red flag. I’m posting this as a case study, since it’s something bloggers deal with all the time, and companies should be aware of the kinds of people they hire to represent them.
The post read like a typically spammy submission. Here’s the email I received with the comment notification from TypePad:

A new comment from “Stephanie ” was received on the post “LinkedIn Connects” of the weblog “Inside the Marketers Studio – David Berkowitz’s Marketing Blog”.
Comment:
It
really sounds like Linkedln really took care of you the right way. Good
customer service is something that is in my opinion not taken as
seriously as it should be. I just recently wastched an interview with Rich Hanks that was all about ‘Customer Service’. Check it out, I found it to be very interesting and helpful.

• Commenter name: Stephanie
• Commenter email: steph_eyre@yahoo.com
• IP address: 160.7.251.180
• Authentication: None

The only edit I removed was that the phrase “interview with Rich Hanks” links to a post at Mindshare – mshare.net. I left the link in the original comment, even if it has a tiny bit of search value, for illustrative purposes.
Stephanie’s email, surprise, bounces. She’s not on LinkedIn (ironically, given the subject of the post). She does surface on a couple other blogs talking about customer service. Here’s a comment she left at Wikinomics.com, right after her colleague Carrie did (“Mindshare” links to Mshare.net in the comment):

GOOD Customer service is so important! You need it to get the customers
saticfaction and more importantly you need it to get the customer
loyalty. I recenlty have come across a great and very informational
website called Mindshare. I loved it and found it to be very helpful.

I looked up her IP address, and it links to Nebo.edu, a school district in Utah. Mindshare is based in Salt Lake City, 50 miles away. It makes me wonder if the post is coming from a high school kid, if not someone younger, or just an exec who happens to live in this school district.