September 6, 2004

Spam Attack – Deleted Comments.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Jim @ 4:04 pm

Today I was hit with a massive comment spam bomb. Hundreds of posts were affected. The attack somehow got around my e-mail system, and, worse yet, buried some legitimate URLs in with the spam URL.

While de-spamming, I noticed (unfortunately, too late) that I deleted genuine comments I had not yet read from Shamrocketship, Res Ipsa Loquitur, and Velociworld, each of whom likely received the e-mail indicating that their comments were blocked due to “questionable content”. I apologize for that, and I believe that I have fixed the problem.

If you are experiencing a problem leaving comments here, please send me an e-mail, and I will try to fix things.

I would like to see the sub-human scum behind the spam attack spend more than a few years in the Greybar Hotel.

8 Comments

  1. I really with there was an easy way to charge the SpamScum ™ actual dollars for wasting our time.

    Since it isn’t so easy, we’re left with few options. I chose the most extreme – requiring registration with a confirmation link sent to the email left on the registration form. Result – No Spam at all – nearly no comments either.

    Comment by Larry Morin — September 6, 2004 @ 8:19 pm

  2. Well no, I didn’t get such an e-mail. But late Saturday (?) night I posted something and when I checked for it Sunday nothing was there. So my comment, whatever it was, was blocked. But I swear the content wasn’t ‘questionable’ unless perhaps either the Kerry or Bush campaign machines are behind the spamming. It’s quite possible I said something against BOTH of them. Oooh, now I’m a’scared to post . . .

    Comment by Shamrock — September 6, 2004 @ 11:06 pm

  3. An alternative to registration is to disable comments after a post leaves your main index page. It can be done automatically in Movable Type. (Don’t ask me to remember how I did it, but I did. There are some great MT support forums that will help you get it done.) After a couple of weeks, how many legit readers are trying to post new comments, anyway? This way, a spam attack can affect only a dozen or so posts, and manual deletion is a heck of a lot quicker.

    Comment by Jack Bog — September 7, 2004 @ 12:18 am

  4. FWIW, I recently noted that my MT-Blacklist was blocking posts with “usa” in them. (I think it also picke up U.S.” I manually deleted that word from the blacklist, and it took care of the problem (I think).

    Comment by Jack Bog — September 7, 2004 @ 12:19 am

  5. I misremember the original source for this joke, but in a just world the penalty for spamming would be incarceration in a cell with a man who had just enlarged his penis, was taking Viagra, and looking for a new relationship while bragging about all the ways he was going to get rich quick. Hope this helps for, oh, maybe all of three seconds.

    Comment by Richard Longman — September 7, 2004 @ 6:38 am

  6. I didn’t get an e-mail either, but no biggie. Like Jack says, I use the ‘turn off comments’ solution rather than the blacklist. It seems to me to be fairly easy for spammers to get an IP that isn’t on the blacklist, judging by the blogs I see that get hit just like you did. They can’t get around closed comments. Sure they can still hit the more recent posts, but that’s a small number that’s fairly easy to delete and then ban that IP.

    Comment by Rita — September 7, 2004 @ 8:02 am

  7. ..and while you’re at it, I have two more entities who could be incarcerated. YOU have readers. I can see why they might spam your blog. I’m a little hole in the wall church mouse with maybe two readers, and I’m getting spammed regularly. They do it because they CAN….and I’d like to put them out of business!

    Comment by buffy — September 11, 2004 @ 6:22 pm

  8. Futility is obvious

    Comment by Enter Grudge — January 16, 2005 @ 7:11 pm

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