I’m so sick of spam. Before, I used to get mail spam only. No matter what anti-spam techniques I used the spammers would somehow find a way to get their messages through. Starting from Viagra and Nigeria bank offers, ending with spam from Russia.
Now I get spammed on my own website! I don’t know how the heck spammers got my website address, but they keep adding messages to my guestbook. Some of them try to spam in comments section of posted articles, but I dump their messages before they get posted (pre-approval). I got so sick of guestbook spam that I removed any URL links from it. Now if they post their spam messages, their site URLs will be invisible!
Spammers should be killed! They should be punished for the annoyance they cause on the Internet and for the additional amount of work we admins have to do because of them.
Die spammers, die!
P.S. Apache performance guide has finally been completed!
About Nasim Mansurov
I hear ya!
Actually, I think I tamed e-mail spam almost completely through SpamAssasin in conjunction with some of my own custom exim filters.
But sometimes my weblog gets upto 10 comment spam a day, so I had to turn “Comment moderation” on, which is extra work every day, deleting/approving comments. I bet I could use SpamAssasin for filtering my comments too, but never thought of it before!
But Google recently came up with “nofolow” attribute, which will tackle the issue through completely different angle. Checkout : http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
I too have SpamAssassin and have a lot of custom filters in Qmail. But anti-spam techniques do not generally work against Russian spammers and those who use images as the spam message :(
The google idea is great, but I don’t think spammers are going to care much about that. They will post their spam messages everywhere, not knowing about the “nofollow” attribute. I, too, started to moderate all comments in my blog :(
I expect that, as experienced computer users age, as they approach the end of their lives, that those disgusted with spam and spammers will track down some of those spammers and shoot them dead.
Why not? If an elderly person is facing natural death what can the law do to them? A life sentence when one is 80 years old is nothing!!!!!
I hope the elderly do a final service for society. Let a couple hundred spammers be shot dead and having a host of elderly ready to shoot more spammers, I think the spammers will come to their senses and realize that their spamming is a death sentence.
Way to go! An original solution proposed by SpamHater, LOL.
I know exactly how you guys feel, I’ve been there. There were times I was so furious, I remember setting up a “spam-fighter-bot” to spam spammers back in high volumes as DSA attack, hoping it would bring their computers down. But to no avail :(
Time passed, now I’ve learnt to live with it. Of course, I have to spend some time almost each month fine-tuning my exim filters, which I still consider waste of time.
I realize eventually something will have to be done to stop spammers. But what exactly? That’s the challenge.
Nasim,
I’m just curious. I noticed how you’re “authenticating” commenters on this weblog, through the HTTP authentication to prevent spam.
This challenge-responce feature is well thought of, but
how successful has it been to prevent spam?
I’m also thinking of more automated comment moderation, since it’s getting ridicilous!
Sherzod, you wouldn’t believe how helpful this simple authentication method is for me. I used to get around 50-80 spams/day and now I barely get any. The spammers do not like putting their crap manually, so they use automated scripts that do the job for them. Well, their automated scripts fail on anything non-standard :) Even if they come up with something that would automatically input the login/pass, I would simply change the password and voila! :)
Awesome! This is giving me even more ideas. To reduce less-pleasant interaction, how about inserting a snippet of javascript code that dyanmically generates a hidden field with a timestamp or similar value, which gets submitted together with the comment? I doubt any of the spambots have javascript interpreters! If a human-commenter isn’t using a JS compliant browser you could resort to a less-friendly challenge-responce system similar to the one you have now.
Do you know what the saddest thing is? It’s only temporary! It builds a ground for a never-ending battle between us (webloggers) and them (spam-bots). Once more of us start using such and similar techniques, more funding will be allocated for development of more adaptive bots, even the ones with JavaScript compiler (Mozailla publish their JS compiler online).
Having a dynamic javascript is a good idea, too :) I think the bulletproof method would be to require a user to type a word that gets dynamically generated from an image (GD & other similar techniques could be used). Most websites that require registration use this technique and it works very well. No spambot can find out what the random characters are, especially if the images are converted to a human-only readable format (with lines and different alignment/background colors). Add some extra stuff like Javascript method suggested above + simple authentication and you can be sure no spambot will ever touch your blog. But you might annoy some people who just want to leave a comment :-)
Btw, if you want to add a similar authentication method, here is what I have in my httpd.conf:
<virtualhost *>
(all virtualhost settings)
<directory “/blah/blah”>
(all directory settings)
AuthName “Please authenticate using: Username: blah Password: blah”
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /path/to/passwd/file/my.passwd
Allow From All
<files script.cgi>
require valid-user
</files>
</directory>
</virtualhost>
Of course, don’t forget to generate the my.passwd file with “htpasswd”!
I find the warped codes pretty hard to read – I think that sometimes it goes a bit over the score?
I’m just starting to get spam on my guestbook – I pre-check all entries at the moment, but I’m thinking of putting a simple graphic code checker in (easy to read) and writing a filter script that will automatically change any anchor tags entered to point to different domains, like crayola.com or disney.com, etc. That will give visitors a bit of fun before I delete the offending entries.
Not good if you’re getting a *lot* of spam comments, right enough.
I got the security code wrong on the first attempt… way to hard for me to read :(…
I am ready to contribute money. we should have a common account to deposit amount. who ever kill a spammer killer and his family/himself should be benifitted by good amount contributed by the well wishers on internet
How you do it is, buy the crap they push, stop payment after they ship, then you get a name and address. Then you kill them. It is that easy. If they know they will soon die they stop, or we just keep killing them.
This would be mrcy killing and not punishable in most countries. Who they going to side with? How many jurors don’t receive spam from these scum?
Another way to stop them would be for email server software to drop traffic that fails a RDNS. Easy, but none do it. I am sure they are getting some kickback from these a-holes. Why does Micros**t so a RDNS, then do nothing about it? Before Spam they used to allow you to drop the connection.
Killing spammers is Vermine Control. well worth paying for.
I’ll do it, just give me their addresses, I can shut down any spam providing I.T. site with no problem, send those geeky little morons running for the door, then blast them with my machine guns. Killing spammers and those that profit from spam IS NOT A CRIME, it is a service for the good of humanity. Just send me the info and $10,000.00 cash.
Before you can kill anyone you need to find/identify the spammer, then make sure he’s involved in the spam business.
If anyone reading this get that far, please write in your findings on this web. Someone will verify this info and if it fits, do what has to be done FOR FREE.
Cheers!
DEATH TO SPAMMERS> KILL KILL KILL!
FUCK MARKTING PEOPLE THEY ALL NEED TO DDDDDDDDDIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
I have had a website for 1 month after about 2 weeks i started getting spam on my forum than it continued i have like 3-5 regular spambots that keep signing up and spamming the same shit over and over although ive allready made it display as stars only *****
I freeking hate this shit! I just start wondering why they do it, if its for incressing their pagerank with google or something, i think google should ban them.. i mean if there are like 100000 search results and if you enter into them they are all on forums where they post their sick xxx or pills crap.
And i gotta say the majority of the crap bots spew is about pages in Russia and China!
I’d like to tie em up & port f**k em up the ass with macheti
Spammer shoud be sentence to DEADDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!! kill them all right away!! Die Die Die!!!
Send them all near the Gate of Hell of Ben LAden.
Why do they keep flooding our mailboxes with garbage that we never even look at? Are these people complete idiots?
I use a free version of MailWasher to download a text-only list consisting of From lines and Subject lines. (With text only, there’s no way for a virus to get through.) I then have the enormous satisfaction of deleting everything I don’t want in about the same amount of time it takes to flush a toilet.
Maybe the REAL idiots are the ones who pay their money to spamming services because they’re under the illusion that someone is actually looking at this stuff. It’s actually rather sad and pathetic, when you stop to think about it.
Computer removal and broken bones does the trick, we may not get them all, but at least we reduce some Spammers.
KILL ALL SPAMMERS WITH A HAMMER! STOP CHEMTRAILS! 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB! 9/11 WAS A CONTROLLED DEMOLITION! KILL ALL SPAMMERS BY FINDING WHERE THEY “WORK” AND SHOOT OR KILL THEM AND THE BEST IS TO TORTURE THEM FOR HOURS OR DAYS BEFORE THEY DIE. OTHERWISE TORTURE AND LEAVE THEM CRIPPLED SO THEY REMEMBER NOT TO SPAM.
STOP CHEMTRAILS! STOP CRIME!