Sep 24 2005

Spammers on no-doze…

Published by Mugwug at 12:41:40 under Scams, Spam and Skullduggery

Over the last 24 hours I have received an unprecedented deluge of comment spam. I stopped counting at 350, and by then had already made efforts to close the comments on any posts older than one month (something I should have done ages ago, but the comment spam problem really hadn’t been a big issue up until now).

This time the spam came in using three different URLs per comment in an half-hearted effort to cloak their identity. The first is in the URL field which pointed to one of their online gambling, viagra or what have you sites. The second was in the text of the message, which pointed to legitimate blogs or blog entries, and the third was a hyperlink immediately following the second which pointed at another spam site.

I’ll end up experimenting with some more blacklist packages at work tonight (when I’ve finished the long overdue zombie reviews I have - Thats five movies pending right now), and hopefully the closed comments will keep the spam to tolerable levels until I get our defences sorted out.

Good times…

3 Responses to “Spammers on no-doze…”

  1. # Gregon 24 Sep 2005 at 13:32:35

    You’re doing better than me. I turned on that spam thingee-ma-jig, but can’t figure out why it won’t let me delete the spam that did show up.

    That aside, how’s your brother doing? The news about Texas had me wonder if he was impacted by the storm of biblical proportions. Hope he’s doing OK.

  2. # Mugwugon 24 Sep 2005 at 18:00:00

    No idea, I’ve got bugger all experience with blogger, I’d say worst case scenario copy the blog entry, then delete it from blogger and then repost it (provided you can change the post date), should kill all the comments. It’s better than give the spammers a single link as far as I’m concerned.

    Hehe… sister in law is in Iraq, brother is in the path of a Hurricane, ever get the feeling your life is a little boring compared to others?

  3. # Melon 25 Sep 2005 at 13:25:13

    Hey, stuff happens in Toronto…We did have that blackout afew years ago!

    But I know what you mean. My big beef right now is the CBC strike and seeing that strike isn’t going to end any time soon, I’ll have to flip on the radio for commentary during the Leafs Season Opener! Go Leafs Go!