I’m sure everyone with blogs face the problem of people posting spam as a comment to a blog entry. I usually get one or two a week. The blog software logs the IP address, which I can then block. I always block the whole segment, as its easy to change your IP address to another on the same segment.
Today, though, someone posted 18 different comments all within two minutes. Almost all were for casinos. One of the messages was in Japanese. (After spending three months in Tokyo, I was getting good at reading kana, even if I didn’t know what it meant. But I’ve pretty much forgotten it all. Does your browser display kana? オンラインカジノ Whip out my Kana For Busy People booklet… It says o-n-ra-i-n-ka-ji-no. No idea what it means. )
I don’t understand the posting of spam to blogs in that they’re posting to messages that are weeks or months old. I only have a hand full of readers anyway, and most of you read what I write within a day or two. And I appreciate it.
The scary part is that each of today’s spam comments had a completely different IP address. None of the segments were remotely similar. Has someone written a script to fill out the comment form and spoof the IP address? Or have they discovered a flaw in the MovableType software? The only thing that was going for us was that it was very time consuming to post a comment to the blog entries. I immediately receive notice when someone has posted a comment and can usually delete the message within minutes. If the posting of spam has now been automated, I may be in for a lot more work. Hope I won’t have to completely disable comments as Wil Wheaton did.
ACtually, Mt LJ hardly gets them, but they seem to get collaboratively filtered.