What Fresh Hell is This?
June 5, 2004
OK, I am guilty of always wanting to use that great line from Dorothy Parker, but I think it is apt for having to deal with Spam Commenting after weeks of dealing with spam, viruses, adware, dead and dying hardware, and my domain name being used as the return address in, apparently, three million spam emails that went out last week.
This blog is a modest enterprise. I have been happy to post 12 or so entries a month, and to enjoy some dialogue with readers. In truth, I seem to get more direct emails than I do formal comments, but that is fine. In fact, I prize the comments people have posted; they are the real value of the blog, if you ask me. Sometime in the last week though I began to get 10-20 spam comments a day. MovableType does allow you to block by IP address, but whatever or whoever is doing most of the spam commenting comes in on a fresh set of IP addresses every day (but uses the same maddeningly inane (and fake) email address (hrie@yahoo.com)). Weirder still, they are posting all manner of URLs (most recently prescription drugs and debt consolidation).
So, indeed, what fresh hell is this?
A tip of the cap to Jay Allen, who has made available a tool, MT-Blacklist, that can be added to a MovableType installation to block spam comments (and clean up ones that are already there). My thanks to Jay, and curses to you, hrie@yahoo.com.
Posted by Bill Trippe at June 5, 2004 11:27 AM
