Charles on… anything that comes along

Just had some attempted spam from the IP address 66.230.189.100, which the whois says belongs to

ISPrime, Inc. NET-66-230-128-0-1
Phantographics LLC (NET-66-230-189-0-1) 66.230.189.0 - 66.230.189.255
(ie to Phantographics, apparently an Australian company).

Google Phantographics, and they turn up at a place called Fraudguardian.com, which records attempts to place false orders with online retailers. (Tighten the search to “Phantographics LLC” and you only get the Fraudguardian result.)

So either Phantographics is run by people who are fraudsters, or its computers are run by people who don’t know how to configure a proxy so it can’t be used from outside the organisation. I wonder which it is?

The thing that’s still so amazing is how relentless this is. You don’t see it, I don’t see it, but this blog and millions of others like it are being hammered, absolutely hammered all the time with attempted comment spam. (I find out when I turn the reporting feature on to see what’s getting bounced. It’s hundreds every day.) My filters are now so well tuned they’ve got barely any chance of getting through (fingers crossed). That, and cutting access to huge swathes of the world that were only apparently used to post spam, of course.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Cash machine fraudsters use convincing "add-on" on ATMs (30 October 2004; score: 43.22%)
• "Well, he looked like a religious nutter, Sarge" - no, that's Andrew Brown, you berks (3 March 2006; score: 28.28%)
• Can we make computers secure faster than scammers can exploit their flaws? (25 October 2004; score: 28.06%)