Spam in my mailbox? I cannot utter enough expletives to describe the depth of my revulsion for spam. Spam on my blog? Sailors, cover your ears.
Fighting spam is a pain in the ass. For the first time in my twelve years of experience online, effective spam fighting tools are hot on the heels of spammers or so-called “internet marketeers.” Cleaning up the spam and providing a strong ongoing security to my blog took less than an hour this evening.
Granted, I’ve been watching it build over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been scrutinizing the patterns and signatures of crap comments on old posts adverising penis enlargement (I’m already nearly half-an-inch wide, any bigger and even more women will run away in fear) and hot Venezualan disabled midget lesbians. There are commonalities to them, even if just in their methodologies. However previous attempts to stop the posts through existing means like IP banning were proving fruitless since the professional assholes spammers know how to spoof their IP addresses so they’re different each time, thus unbannable.
I was left with a plan of reaction, watching my post notifications and deleting spam comments immediately–before Google has a chance to index them and increase the ranking of the asshole’s spammer’s site. Thanks to MT-BlackList and a couple of quick Google searches, I’m now proactive.
If the motivation is to increase page ranking, if someone is going to spend his time stuffing comments on my site with his URLs to raise his site’s ranking in search engines, he’s wasting his time.
Case in point: Do a Google search for the phrase “amazing site see a later” including the quotes (or just click here). There are, as of this writing, 305 results. They’re all blog comments and tagboards. They are all spam.
Even the venerable PickUpYourOwnDamnSocks.com has been hit. And those 305 hits are only the ones Google has had time to index. There are more, sitting quietly in hundreds more blogs, waiting for Google to get around to seeing them.
Now do a Google search for “Jamie Leigh” or “jamieleigh.net”. More spam, this time from someone much less sophisticated and motivated not by porn and viagra affiliate programs. Miss Jamie Leigh is out to make herself famous by convincing people that she already is. And she’s using press releases and verbose but pointless comments of great length (and sometimes photographs) on others’ blogs to do it. She even posted an “open offer to any magazine brave enough” to hire a person who writes the phrase “…I am at a crossroad and need to hone what I done online…”. In the same desperate plea “open offer” for help she advises the potential employer that “any magazine to take me on will no doubt go down in history because you’re offer and you’re willingness to take on something so new and so unusual (a web icon turned magazine writer, turned peace bring, a girl has her dreams) will no doubt make your magazine break all the boundaries.” Can you count the grammatical errors?
She’s posted on my blog a few times (please, take a moment to look at this post to yesterday’s Saturday Slant (on my blog) and think about how big her balls must be), as well as on many others’ blogs. She posts to conversations into which she wasn’t invited. Her comments never relate even marginally to the topic of the conversation. What’s more, she never actually contributes to a conversation or posts something that isn’t self-serving. It’s always the same self-important drivel written as if she were Marilyn Monroe condescending to an interview with a high school newspaper. We’re so fortunate to have someone of such (un)celebrity granting us an audience. After all, in Jamie’s own words: “I am woman of action and can’t wait to spread my wings beyond this cage of the internet.”
Well, Jamie can never darken my digital door again. Let her spread her wings beyond this cage of the Internet; the Internet will be glad to see her go.
The famous “Halifax Attorney” can’t post here any more.
Neither can the prolific “amazing site see a later” jerk who posted a minimum of two messages per day on my older posts for more than three weeks.
To quote Skid Row (and date myself horribly): “No need to whimper, no need to shout / This party´s over, so get the fuck out / Get the fuck out.”
Buh–Bye. It’s my site. I feel pretty damned good about taking it back from the spammers.
if you have not been to the pompous girls site.… waste not any time.
It is a haven of java pop ups and spy ware infiltrations, trying deperately to seduce its way into my hard drive and registry keys.
Unlike the the sites mistress though, the gain network, and microsoft better browser methods will give up, and just vanish in a poof of disappointment.
LOL Yeah, I’ve been there. Insidious.
Another thing is her vanity. In any given view of the site there are 12–20 photos of her in your face. If you go to her photo gallery it’s entirely photos of her–usually her face, but a shot of her chest now and then breaks up the monotony (not). She doesn’t show pictures of friends (does she have any?) or photos she’s taken of people, places, things, etc. In fact, the hundreds of photos of herself lead one to believe she only photographs herself.
As I said to her in the e-mail informing her that she’s been banned from the Saturday Slant and this site, she seems to have a pathological obsession with the front side of a camera. It’s as if she’s trying to accumulate as many photos of her as are often taken by others of a given celebrity in an effort to make herself appear to be a celebrity. Certainly all of her other efforts to gain celebrity by simpling convincing people that she already is supports her self-portrait obsession.
While investigating her spam attacks on my blog and others I ran across comments in various places written by people who had seen, and followed the links within, some of her spam postings. The average reaction to Jamie Leigh’s site can be summed up in one of the quotes I found: “Ow! That site makes my eyes hurt.”
She describes herself as “the Madonna of the Internet” and “a web icon.” For what? Certainly not for design skill. She has profound and acute delusions of granduer. Unfortunately for her she’s not smart enough to attempt reinforcing her delusions with even basic action or evidence.
With a mind like hers, Jamie Leigh would make an effective celebrity stalker.
My three paragraph response died due to a fluttering connection issue (another program was taking too much bandwidth). I don’t feel like retyping it.
I’ve been watching the activity on my blog. Since upgrading the security (see above), the site has blocked a number of spam attempts. Wahoo!
good for you lad. it is nice to see that someone is pulling an Alamo against the onslaught of the spam nation.
As much as I would like to add to my previous statement about the dissolussional lass, I will forego it. After all, bad press, is still press.
Mt-blacklist is such a wonderful tool. Anything that makes my life a bit easier gets my vote. It amazes me the amount of spam that invades my blogs. Three instalations of MT over 400 spam comments.
Chris: Eh. I’m done with her.
Gina: 400? Christ! Obviously there are too many poeple who believe in profit at anyone’s expense.
I just have to share this, from my blog logs:
2004.03.08 20:03:21 193.170.65.200 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Blog
2004.03.09 21:57:18 81.152.149.157 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Blog
2004.03.11 00:38:42 67.75.113.133 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Blog
2004.03.11 15:16:38 195.3.96.94 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Blog
2004.03.11 16:00:06 200.47.30.241 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Blog
2004.03.12 03:48:39 66.233.128.140 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Blog
All but one of the above are the “amazing page” jerk. The exception is one of those enlargement spams. (I can’t use the actual terms or my comment will be blocked.)
yes… well isnt your blog “large” enough? the only people who need that already drive fancy sports cars and have hair plugs.
It’s MT-Blacklist just great. I was starting to get viagra crap spamming and trying to delet those each day was just getting to be a pain in the ass. I was told via a friend about it and ever since Oh thank jay For saving my Blog!
So pleased to see others Learning about MT blacklist as well.
Amen Brother!
And thanks for the pointer to MT-Blacklist. I’m about to install it.
I have been soooo tired of deleting the “see a later” slime