Charles on… anything that comes along

Wow. If you’re taking the RSS comments feed from this site then you’ll have noticed the occasional one or two popping up - all nice and relevant to what’s going on. I get emailed though whenever someone posts a comment. And just noticed 27 in the queue for approval.

It’s just a blitz: 27 comments posted on that many different posts from 20 different IP addresses (some came from the same IP) in the space of three minutes (from Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:05:10 to Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:07:44). OK, two and a half minutes.

All, of course, coming from compromised PCs running SODDING WINDOWS. Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

This is clearly now an industry; anyone with sufficient Google juice is an instant target for something that the spam controllers do in no doubt the most bored fashion, like one of Tony Soprano’s under-under-under-underlings.

How do wikis prevent spam? Maybe that’s the answer. Anyway, to anyone who finds that they can read this but can’t comment because they get “Access Denied” - that’s the Spammer Tar Pit picking up on your IP address, which probably means (unless you’re on dialup) that your machine is compromised.

I suppose though this does demonstrate how good Wordpress is at preventing blog spam, once you’ve got a couple of the right plugins. (See my post of yesterday for the names.)

The other thing that blog spam, and any sort of spam does, is generate a remarkable feeling of rage. It’s because of the impotence it implies: you can’t stop these people, can’t see them, can’t reason with them. It’s like raging against clouds for raining on you.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Spam catcher updated, which I hope will solve problems with nice people being unable to pass comment (26 September 2005; score: 56.35%)
• Hyperactive comment blocking (2 December 2004; score: 52.83%)
• Spam attack? Tell Google, and wipe out online herpes (14 July 2005; score: 52.36%)