In the past few months, I have been quite diligent in keeping the Chinese spammerbots off of here. It's been hard--sometimes they hit late at night when I'm sleeping, so I might wake up to 100 or so spam comments, and each one has to be deleted individually. If I was lucky, I could get them right when they started and ban their IP before they got too many posted.
Well, I was off Monday (swapped off days with the other guy in the office), and I had already been off on Friday, so when I got to work Tuesday, I was beyond swamped with work. So, no real time to check and make sure I didn't have lots of spambabies. But, it wouldn't have made a difference, because the new broom at work sent down word that all Internet usage was going to be closely monitored, and anyone using the futuristic 486 computers we're saddled with for anything other than work-work would be in BIG TROUBLE. So when I got home Tuesday night and checked up on things, I had been hit with A THOUSAND spam comments.
I didn't get to do too much--banned a few IPs, deleted probably 250 or so. Still, not even a real dent in things. Last night, we had church, so no time to check, then all day today, then tonight--finally got a chance to check it again. Over TWO THOUSAND spam comments.
It's beyond me--unless Movable Type has some hidden way to delete massive quantities of spam, I've basically lost the battle to keep this crap off of here. It takes at least a couple of minutes to go through the steps to delete a comment, so that's 4000 minutes worth of mindless clicking to get rid of what I've got built up.
So, if you see spam on here, do the obvious thing and don't click on it. And say a little curse on my behalf for the inscrutable little bastages who keep messing up my once pristine little corner of the Web.
UPDATE: 2/12/10 1:18 p.m.
Well, so I gots myself off work early today because of the snow we're having (we've got about an inch or so here at Casa de Possum), so after I got here and got the kids situated outside giving themselves hypothermia and frostbite, I decided to see what the damage was. In addition to seeing I had some comments on this post from some of the ol' regulars, I also noticed that somehow, some way, SOME one has gone through and deleted all of those thousands of spam comments! I don't know if this was done back at Mu.nu Central Control, or somehow the mysterious Pixy Misa heard I was having problems, but I'm back down to where it was, and I'm a happier camper.
Obviously, not happy enough to start blogging again, but happier nonetheless.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at February 11, 2010 10:13 PMI fixed the spammer comments on my blog by moving from MT back to Blogger.
Posted by: megabeth at February 12, 2010 09:54 AMOne of the main reasons I moved back to Blogger was the ability to manage the spam. It was impossible to keep up and as nice as MT is about some things, you have more control of your own blog over at Blogger (which has gotten much better over the years). It did take me a week to move all my posts over to blogger though and that was a pain.
Posted by: Jordana at February 12, 2010 12:27 PMComment spamming is hitting everyone that I know who blogs. Does MT have one of those anti-bot verification boxes? I have having to fill them but hate spam even more.
Posted by: Chef Tony at February 12, 2010 12:55 PMBeth, it's just not worth it--since I don't blog anymore, posting on the old Possumblog.blogspot (which does still exist as a backup) site would just be wasting space. As Jordana notes, Blogspot's a lot better now than it used to be, but there's just too much bother to retransfer back all my old posts.
Tony, I'm not sure what they might have, but in the set-up, I closed comments on all old posts, and there is an email notification of when someone posts a comment, but somehow the spam comments are able to bypass both of those things.
BUT--as noted in the post update, some kind soul managed to get rid of all those thousands of extraneous comments. Whoever did it--THANKS!
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at February 12, 2010 02:36 PM