Fighting Blog Spam

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.

11 thoughts on “Fighting Blog Spam”

  1. Chris

    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.

  2. Chris

    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.

  3. Gina

    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.

  4. Chris

    yes… well isnt your blog “large” enough? the only peo­ple who need that already dri­ve fan­cy sports cars and have hair plugs.

  5. Vix

    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.

  6. Vicki

    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

  7. Pariah Burke

    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.

  8. Pariah Burke

    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!

  9. Pariah Burke

    Chris: Eh. I’m done with her.

    Gina: 400? Christ! Obviously there are too many poe­ple who believe in prof­it at any­one’s expense.

  10. Pariah Burke

    I just have to share this, from my blog logs:

    2004.03.08 04:46:20 66.141.122.213 MT-Blacklist com­ment denial on Blog
    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
  11. Pariah Burke

    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.)

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