Comments on: Flow Through

By: Cate

Cate — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:29:29 +0000

On the subject of email spam - how is it that I regularly get spam at an email address I got under an alias and that said spam is addressed to my real name? Beyond annoying, it’s slightly perturbing - how do these people know my real name?

By: Candice

Candice — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 15:04:46 +0000

Yes! My work here is done.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 05:33:59 +0000

I think this is all very interesting…I just can’t get the image of a “bowl of dicks” out of my head.

By: the mighty jimbo

the mighty jimbo — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 02:51:35 +0000

and now i know how referal spam comes from, not surprisingly from a spam hit in my referals:

“Referral marketing in its simplest terms is a computer program travelling the internet at super-fast speeds, making sure to always enter all URLs in such a way so as to make the targeted site owners and statistical software think that YOUR site actually was the referrer of the seemingly real traffic.”

i swear, as soon as i rule the world, all forms of direct marketing will be banned.

By: diana

diana — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 02:43:35 +0000

I just received my own first round of comment spam this past weekend. On one hand, it made me glad that my blog was finally linked from enough places and made public enough that a spambot was able to harvest it and comment-spam it. On the other hand, deleting 100 comments and blocking a dozen IP addresses kind of took up some quality time.

Comment spam sucks… especially for those of us who get excited when we see that someone’s finally commented — and, oh, look. It’s fucking SPAM. Thanks a lot, Texas Hold-Em Poker fuckface. Way to build me up and let me down.

But I’m not bitter at all.

By: tobyjoe

tobyjoe — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 02:17:31 +0000

The problem with using a SWF is that, at least in theory, a script can be modified to read the bytecode making up the file. If you’ve ever decompiled a SWF, you can see that the data is readable to some degree. Obfuscation is a good idea, certainly, but I imagine that, were a SWF-based solution to become ubiquitous, a script would be modded pretty quickly.

While I think that there might need to be a paradigm shift in the way blogs work, I think that the simplest solution is to force the ‘captcha’ style solution. I know there are certain accessibility problems, and that many users are simply turned off by the extra step, and neither of these are insignificant. Until a new model for personal publishing pops up, the extra step might be the only solution.

Well, that, or MT et al could embrace a bit of security-through-obscurity and break from a standard sitemap… Something that might rewrite the form action for each request could be useful.

As it is, comments are basically an invitation to the world to use your site and server for the publication of any message they choose. This may not be true in intent, but it certainly is in execution. Authentication exists for a reason. While I think some elegance can be used in the enforcement, it may be the only true way to fit the idea of comments into blogs as MT has helped define them.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 22:10:21 +0000

Hi,
You might want to take a look at this:
http://www.actionscripthero.com/blog/archives/000286.php

and this:

http://www.jessewarden.com/archives/2004/12/prevent_blogspa.html
on Jesse Warden’s site.

These Flash developers have come up with a good solution for comment spam. It uses Flash as the comment form (MTgotoAndComment by StÈfane Funaro) and Jesse also suggests making some changes to a MovableType pearl file to get it to block almost any comment spam.

Anyway, I hope that helps somewhat.
Good luck!

By: mihow

mihow — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 21:02:47 +0000

I do get referral spam. That is one thing I have noticed.

Another thing I have noticed (and I have NO idea how this happen) is that a friend of mine who has a Hotmail account has the name Regina Statcher. I NOW get spam from a person with the name Regina Statcker. Same address, one letter off.

Coincidence? I think not. Disconcerting? Oh hell yes.

And I fall for it nearly EVERY time.

By: Jeanette

Jeanette — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:34:15 +0000

400 spam comments per day??? Peanuts in a litter box! I was moaning about getting 20 per day … cannot imagine 400 …

By: Ariel

Ariel — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 19:43:18 +0000

Oh wow: comment spam on posts with closed comments? What a nightmare for those of us (ok: me) who dealt with the issue by using a script like mt-close2 (http://tinyurl.com/5gjoy) to close comments on 2000+ old posts. This is not good. Not good at all.