Monday, November 22, 2004
How's the spam war going?
In the latest 24-hour period here at Philocrites Enterprises, we have recorded 217 separate comment-spam incidents. All but 30 or so were blocked right away by the ever-vigilant MT-Blacklist program. The others I caught in three separate waves and banned manually. The spam rate was so intense early this morning that my host company shut down all scripts for a while (which I learned while trying to comment unsuccessfully on my own site).
One thing this means for you, dear reader, is that the growing Blacklist database — with its 2,492 miscreants — is slowing down the site's speed. When you try to comment, you may notice a considerable delay between the time you click "Post" and the time the screen refreshes with your comment published for all the world to see. Please be patient. I may explore some new technologies for the site during my Christmas break, but I don't really have the patience for learning a whole new system. I have changed one thing, however: From now on, clicking "Comments" won't open a pop-up window; you'll be taken to the individual entry page where you can make your comment. (I understand this can help discourage the spam robots.) Thanks for your patience — and your thoughtful comments!
Copyright © 2004 by Philocrites | Posted 22 November 2004 at 7:27 PM
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Philocrites
"Obscure and literary!" (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart)
Commentary by Chris Walton on Unitarian Universalism, liberal Christianity, American religion, and liberal culture. Contact me.
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4 comments:
Lynn Calvin:
November 22, 2004 08:37 PM | Permalink for this comment
There's an interesting blog entry by John Levine about his testimony in the trial of Jeremy Jaynes, better known under his nom de spam of Gavin Stubberfield. He was an expert witness for the prosecution, the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Philocrites:
November 23, 2004 05:29 PM | Permalink for this comment
I spent a bit of time just now consolidating redundant URLs in the blacklist — and after lots of close attention, managed to eliminate only 150 or so spam sites from my master list. Oh well.
Melanie:
November 24, 2004 06:50 AM | Permalink for this comment
Philocrites,
I got clobbered, too, and had a friend of the site with more tech savvy than myself install MT-Blacklist yesterday. If you aren't using MT-Close Comments, consider adding it.
Luke Ilech:
December 14, 2004 12:25 PM | Permalink for this comment
I was amazed that after I posted my first ever (pinged) message to my blog I was hit by 2 spam entries. Unfortunately I now moderate all comments. And there hasn't been a single comment from the spam robots since I did this. So there's no doubt that comment moderation works. But I guess you may not want to take that approach heh?
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