Nothing but spam
I know the Interwebs are gradually filling up with spam but this is getting ridiculous. On Sunday there were over 2000 attempts (from over 650 different IP addresses!) to abuse my blog comments with spam. This is beyond annoying and is actually causing my internet host problems as dealing with it takes up server resources. It isn't even as if the spam gets through; my cobbled together, hand-crafted spam filters appear to have stopped all but one message and that may have been from a real person rather than robots. So, whoever is behind this stop it, stop it right now. If you continue I may be forced to remove the comment feature from my site. That will stop all the spam but it will also stop any real person leaving a meaningful comment here. If that happens we all lose.
Comments: Nothing but spam
I know the feeling. I have dealt with the same issue. I had a similar issue, where for several days my blog was bogged down with spam attempts. I had to add new anti-spam layers. The spammers ruined email. I now block all email except from a list of approved people just to stop the spam. Soon, that may have to be done with blog comments, too.
Posted by Astroprof on Tuesday 08th Jan 2008 (03:58 UTC)
I don't know what blog platform you use, but might Spam Karma be a solution instead of handcrafted filters?
http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/
Posted by Jeroen on Wednesday 09th Jan 2008 (03:35 UTC)
Jeroen, I use a platform that I wrote myself a few years ago. Actually, my spam filtering works very well. The problem is the sheer volume of spam attempts. Each one has to be processed and that uses up server resources. I might just try making my code a little more efficient as it currently runs lots of tests but could stop immediately once it trips my threshold. A job for the weekend.
Posted by Stuart on Wednesday 09th Jan 2008 (20:13 UTC)
If your ISP cares anything about customers, they will help you. They should be able to find out who it is thats doing this. I don't know what applicable laws there is that govern this, but I bet your ISP knows. Get them to do something for you and the people that visit your site. If they won't, find one that will.
Glenn
Posted by Glenn Gregory on Friday 18th Jan 2008 (21:34 UTC)