This morning, I came in to find that 1437 comments had been left on SVoC. Of which two were real comments, and 1435 were comment spam of the vilest order. It's taken me an hour to get rid of it all.
I don't think 'bastards' is too strong a word, frankly.
Posted to Blogs by Simon Brunning at June 01, 2004 12:25 PMSounds like its time to update your MT and install MT-Blacklist...
Posted by: Sam Newman on June 1, 2004 01:28 PMOr to port it all to another blogging tool altogether.
Posted by: Simon Brunning on June 1, 2004 01:39 PMMT-Blacklist got rid of all of the ones I received ;-)
Posted by: Andy Todd on June 1, 2004 01:42 PMAnother blogging tool isn't going to help much. The reason you got spammed is because someone knew how to post comments in an automated fashion - and he knew this because he knew about MT. He knew about MT because it is popular, and it is popular because its good. If you move to another good blogging tool you'll have exactly the same problem.
There are some ways around this with MT - you could try renaming your comment form script - this would at least foil those spammers that could be bothered looking at your pages. You could move to MT 3.0 and use TypeKey. To could move to 2.6 and use MT-Blacklist (2.66 also includes comment throtteling, stoping multiple posts from the same IP in a short space of time). Or you could even install an MT plugin which requires that commenters enter the number displayed in a GIF before posting (can't find the URL right now) if you doin't mind alientating blind readers and those using text browsers.
Posted by: Sam Newman on June 1, 2004 02:42 PMMy blog is "roll your own" but I have never had any automated comment spam.
Also, I've never had anyone doing any "POSTs" to URLs that don't exist on my site (they would have triggered 404 emails).
Maybe it's a popularity thing. As in, I'm not. :-)
Posted by: Darren on June 1, 2004 04:18 PMMT-Blacklist has certainly cut down on the volume of comment spam appearing on my blog.
Not all though. One devious so-and-so keeps sending comment spam with different URLs and from different IP addresses; always the same e-mail address though. It's as if the bastard is trying to taunt me... "I know you've blacklisted me before but here I am again in a different disguise. Ha ha!"
You'd think these people would have something better to do. Then again, some people would say the same about bloggers!
Posted by: Keith Pitty on June 2, 2004 05:32 AMA right pain in the backside, these people. Glad you were able to find & junk it all...
Posted by: Tracey on June 2, 2004 11:28 AM