January 05, 2005, 17:02Texas, hold-em; Utah, take-is wallet
Looks like I've gotten my second comment advertiser... the first was a one-off a couple months ago, while this was a repetitive attack on several different posts. Somebody was advertising, I would guess based on the name, an on-line gambling site, under thirteen different URLs. The comments have been deleted.
Pivot isn't a very popular blogging package, unlike (for example) Movable Type, so there aren't a lot of drive-by spammers who are already configured to post comments on Pivot sites such as this one. But eventually Pivot will just be one more option in their advertising arsenal, so I've got to be prepared. I'll try finding or programming a Human-confirmation* feature to add to the comments thingie. Since I don't get a ton of comments anyway, I won't be too concerned if, while I'm building and testing things, comments are temporarily disabled or broken.
davidh
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* - which isn't to say that all non-Humans are bad... but I'll want to screen their posts before they go live, either to filter out the ads or to make first contact with a new lifeform :-)
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Update 1/6, 8:20am: Got about a dozen more from several new IP addresses this morning... I guess my site is on some sort of advertiser mailing list now. First step: Block any comment which contains "http:" or "www". This will let regular text messages through but will block ones with URLs. Second step: Ban those new IP addresses (for as much good as it'll do).
Update 8:51am, 3:45pm: Blocked one from a zombie PC in Italy, and another from a machine in Belgium. Still looking for a better way to block them, though, since this is really just a quick-and-dirty hack.
four replies:
You have my pity. I recently migrated to Movable Type. Yes, it is a frequent comment/trackback spam target. But because of this, Six Apart (MT's parent company) and volunteer hackers go to great lengths to come up with solutions. I got about a hundred yesterday. After a few simple changes to my set up, not one.
Bill Dennis () (link) - January 06 '05, 18:22