Tag Archives: spam

Comment Spam

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Luke Maciak

I realized that I’m a bit spoiled by my comment spam filtering plugins. On this blog I use two tools that keep the robots out: Akismet and WPSpamFree. And before you say anything about discrimination about robots, let me just … Continue reading →

Posted in meta | Tagged , | 12 Comments

The Death of CAPTCHA

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Luke Maciak

For a while now we knew that CAPTCHA‘s were becoming irrelevant. There were a great solution when they were first introduced, but I think that everyone knew that they are not going to be around for a long time. The … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , | 11 Comments

Ambiguous One Liner Comments

Posted on October 15, 2007 by Luke Maciak

Lately I started getting lots of odd one liner comments that usually look somewhat like this: Great post! I really enjoyed it! There are many variations, but the message is always the same – a generic praise that does not … Continue reading →

Posted in meta | Tagged | 10 Comments

The “Part Time Job Offer” Scam

Posted on September 24, 2007 by Luke Maciak

Since documenting various email scams such as the UK National Lottery Scam, and the Lady Rita Mosley Scam turned out to be really helpful to so many people, I decided to tackle another spam that appeared in my mailbox recently. … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 10 Comments

Spam Poetry

Posted on August 3, 2007 by Luke Maciak

I’m always strangely compelled to read some of those auto-generated nonsensical sentences generated by spam engines. Sometimes, they are absolute gibberish – but the other times, they almost make sense in some weird way. I got this gem in the … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged | Leave a comment

How do you deal with comment spam?

Posted on June 20, 2007 by Luke Maciak

I always viewed blog spam as a complex problem which requires a multi-layer solution. There is simply no silver bullet that stops all the spam and gives you no false positives. Most conventional approaches can be grouped together into 6 … Continue reading →

Posted in meta | Tagged | 5 Comments

Running without CAPTCHA Experiment

Posted on June 19, 2007 by Luke Maciak

I decided to disable the CAPTCHA in the comments section – at least for a few days. I haven’t seen much spam here lately, and I feel that Akismet and Bad Behavior have been doing an excellent job scooping up … Continue reading →

Posted in meta | Tagged | 21 Comments

Minimalistic 419 Scam

Posted on May 14, 2007 by Luke Maciak

I get more and more of these lame 419 scams lately and they completely bypass gmail’s spam filter. WTF? Is it really that hard to trigger the few key catch phrases these guys use? All those letters are almost exactly … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged | 3 Comments

Using Myspace For Evil

Posted on February 15, 2007 by Luke Maciak

In the morning today I noticed that I got around 10 new friend requests on MySpace. All of them were spam accounts and all but 2 have been deleted since then. Since I’m running Linux I decided to check out … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , | 18 Comments

Chinese 419?

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Luke Maciak

The problem with these damn 419 letters is that spam filters sometimes don’t catch them. This one is short and sweet – the dude doesn’t even give me imaginative the back story or tell me how many millions of “US … Continue reading →

Tagged | 8 Comments

UK National Lottery Scam

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Luke Maciak

They are getting creative or what? This time it’s not a rogue prince, a rich political refuge with a diamond mine, or a wealthy British lady dying from a cancerous stroke. Oh no, this time I won a friken lottery: … Continue reading →

Tagged | 133 Comments

Comment Spammers Suck

Posted on December 15, 2006 by Luke Maciak

I’m currently being hit by some sort of Zombie swarm averaging 20-30 posts a day. They are all coming from different IP’s and trickle in at different times. There are maybe 5-6 different patterns that repeat over and over again, … Continue reading →

Posted in meta | Tagged | 12 Comments

Another Comment Spammer Locked Out

Posted on November 9, 2006 by Luke Maciak

Ladies and gentelmen, here is another IP address to put in your .htaccess deny list: 209.160.72.10 This IP apparently belongs to hopone.net which looks like a legitimate company. I was surprised to see that this machine is accessible from the … Continue reading →

Tagged | 6 Comments

More 419 Letters

Posted on September 27, 2006 by Luke Maciak

I’m so tempted to reply to one of those and make fun of them! But I’m kinda scared that if I do Mr. Ecko is going to show up at my house and kick my ass. :mrgreen: From:LadyRita Mosley. 4 … Continue reading →

Posted in geek humor | Tagged | 36 Comments

Things I Learn From Spammers

Posted on September 2, 2006 by Luke Maciak

Thanks to the diligence of [tag]comment spammers[/tag] I have learned something interesting. I’m not sure if [tag]ny.com[/tag] is affiliated with the New York City in any way – it looks like a big commercial link site for NY related content. … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 3 Comments

Damn Comment Spammers

Posted on September 2, 2006 by Luke Maciak

[tag]Comment spammers[/tag] are getting more sophisticated every day. It is a fucking arms race. Now that they know we all have content filters on, they try to make their messages sound innocent. I currently have one jackass posting things like … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 4 Comments

Comment Spammers Suck!

Posted on July 21, 2006 by Luke Maciak

I just installed a CAPTCHA for my comment box. It will be interesting to see if the amount of spam tappers off now. I think it should. If it doesn’t, then one of the following is happening: we are dealing … Continue reading →

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Trackback Spam

Posted on May 7, 2006 by Luke Maciak

Trackback Spam pisses me off. I just got one hit from some pill pusher the other day. Comment spam is one thing, but trackback spam is even more annoying. I just bought this domain like a week ago or so, … Continue reading →

Posted in meta | Tagged , | 2 Comments