Monday, October 03, 2005
Comment spam
After getting about ten pieces of comment spam today, I've temporarily disabled the comments until I can figure out how to stop the scourge. Feel free to email me in the meantime!
Update: Comments back on, but I don't yet know how I'm going to prevent spam. My best option might just be to revert to the Blogger commenting system. I adopted the BloggerHacks system before Blogger made their system more intuitive and accessible, so maybe I don't need it now.
Another update: I had hoped against hope that I would turn the comments back on and the spammers would relent, but that hasn't happened. I guess I'm going to have to go back to the Blogger commenting system, but I'll have to disable comments again until I have time to do that. That means comments probably won't be back up until tomorrow at the earliest. Again, feel free to email me in the meantime.
Final update: I've gone back to the Blogger commenting system to prevent spamming. Unfortunately, all of the old comments will be a bit unsightly, because they will have the byline generated by my old BloggerHack as well as the byline generated by Blogger. Oh well. The spam really came on like a scourge, and there was nothing to do but delete and immunize immediately. It was easy to spot the spam by the way the first line of the comments invariably began: "What a great blog!" or "Love your blog!" So flatter me at your own risk.
Update: Comments back on, but I don't yet know how I'm going to prevent spam. My best option might just be to revert to the Blogger commenting system. I adopted the BloggerHacks system before Blogger made their system more intuitive and accessible, so maybe I don't need it now.
Another update: I had hoped against hope that I would turn the comments back on and the spammers would relent, but that hasn't happened. I guess I'm going to have to go back to the Blogger commenting system, but I'll have to disable comments again until I have time to do that. That means comments probably won't be back up until tomorrow at the earliest. Again, feel free to email me in the meantime.
Final update: I've gone back to the Blogger commenting system to prevent spamming. Unfortunately, all of the old comments will be a bit unsightly, because they will have the byline generated by my old BloggerHack as well as the byline generated by Blogger. Oh well. The spam really came on like a scourge, and there was nothing to do but delete and immunize immediately. It was easy to spot the spam by the way the first line of the comments invariably began: "What a great blog!" or "Love your blog!" So flatter me at your own risk.
Improvised @ 10:35 PM 
Collective Improvisation:
This is a test with the Blogger comment system to see if my "Recent Comments" hack still works.
Posted by 
Caleb McDaniel on 10/03/2005 10:31:00 PM : Permalink
Only ten?! I'm being absolutely blitzed with comment spam at the moment, all from various finance companies offering l*ans and m*rtg*ges. When the Internet collapses under the weight of this crap, it will be the fault of governments who, instead of instantly banning the people who benefit from these adverts from the Net, consider any form of activity that promotes free enterprise to be legitimate and laudable.
Dante would have had a special circle in the Inferno for these evil people.
Dante would have had a special circle in the Inferno for these evil people.
I do feel bad for complaining about a measly dozen, but all the evidence suggested that there would be more -- many more -- unless I nipped them in the bud!
I wonder what punishment Dante would have devised ... I imagine them walking around with their heads surrounded by swarms of talking bees who whisper advertisements in their ears and cannot be swatted away.
I wonder what punishment Dante would have devised ... I imagine them walking around with their heads surrounded by swarms of talking bees who whisper advertisements in their ears and cannot be swatted away.
Posted by Caleb McDaniel on 10/05/2005 08:42:00 AM : Permalink
