Category Archives: Spam

Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam…
Lovely spam, wonderful spaaaaaam!

Whither Spam?

By Dougal | Published: June 14, 2008

When I switched to my new Slicehost server, I spent a while trying to decide what I wanted to do about email for my domains. I contemplated using Google’s domain email service, or some other third-party email hosting. But I just hated giving up that much control of my email setup. [...]

Also posted in Hardware, Linux, Servers, Services, Software, Tech | Tagged antivirus, clamav, Email, email spam, fighting spam, Linux, mail, mailscanner, mailwatch, Servers, slicehost, smtp, Spam, spamassassin, spamsnake, Ubuntu | 4 Comments

Follow you, follow me

By Dougal | Published: February 15, 2007

Two years ago today, we released WordPress version 1.5. This was a pretty major release that introduced several new features that are still major staples of the current 2.1 branch: the Dashboard, Themes, and Pages. It also added a minor new change which was mildly controversial to some: comments were automatically flagged with the ‘nofollow’ attribute.

The rel="nofollow" idea had good intentions: to give content producers a way to link to another site without implying that they approve of it. [...]

Also posted in Blogging, Microformats, Plugins, Search, WordPress | Tagged Akismet, commentspam, Google, Metadata, nofollow, PageRank, plugin, Spam, WordPress, yahoo | 89 Comments

Some blog spam cases you might want to watch for

By Dougal | Published: October 27, 2006

I like to think that I’ve got some pretty decent spam prevention measure in place on my server. My mail server uses RBL/DNSBL services and sets maximum limits for certain protocol violations. All my blogs use Akismet for comment spam detection. I’ve got a large number of entries in my comment moderation and blacklist lists. And I hook it all together into my SpamValve plugin, which automatically adds firewall rules to block repeat offenders.

Still, though, occassionally I get bursts of traffic that either aren’t detected by these measures, or that are detected, but the process of handling the connection causes excessive load on the system. [...]

Also posted in Blogs, Plugins, Software, Tech, WordPress | Tagged Akismet, commentspam, Email, PHP, plugin, Plugins, Spam, SpamValve, this-site, WordPress | 11 Comments

Ping-O-Matic Fun

By Dougal | Published: January 13, 2006

The problem with running a service like Ping-O-Matic is that sometimes you have to send emails like this:

To: [...deleted...]
Subject: Re: pingomatic

> Hi!
>
> I have tried to ping pingomatic for about 2 days now
> but it will not work for me. . [...]

Also posted in Blogs, Community, Fun, Ping-O-Matic, Services | Tagged pingomatic | 24 Comments

Poisoning the well

By Dougal | Published: December 6, 2005

Overall, the volume of spam attempts on my server have been down lately. Oh, I still get a steady stream, I delete over 100 comment spams (caught by my filters) each day. But I’ve seen fewer of the massive, server-squashing spam runs that hammer my web service with too many simultaneous connections, blocking out legitimate users.

On the other hand, I’m seeing a lot more attempts by spammers to poison the well. What I mean by that is that they are submitting bogus comments, full of non-spammy (but more-or-less random) content, and links to legitimate web sites. [...]

Also posted in Blogs | Tagged Akismet, Bayesian, commentspam, dom, Spam | 16 Comments

Dear Spammers…

By Dougal | Published: September 16, 2005

Thank you for continuing to submit your data to my anti-spam systems. I have been able to put your information to very good use, keeping my blogs and email practically spam-free 24-hours a day. The emails, comments, trackbacks, and referers that you submit are analyzed for key spam indicators, which I can then use to automatically block your servers so that your future spam attempts don’t even reach my web server.

Eventually, I hope to share my collected anti-spam knowledge to a wider audience, via WordPress plugins and web services available to the general public. [...]

Also posted in Blogs, Fun, Plugins, Services, WordPress | Tagged plugin, Plugins, Spam, SpamValve, Web, WordPress | 16 Comments

Googlebomb: Popup Blockers

By Dougal | Published: July 15, 2005

Has your blog been spammed with ads for a Popup Blocker for Internet Explorer?

If you are getting here through a search on Popup Blockers or for Pop-Up Blocker or Pop Up Blocker Internet Explorer, please do not buy from pop-upblocker dot org They are spammers and unethical. [...]

Also posted in Blogs, SEO, Search | Tagged commentspam, Google, SEO, Spam | 14 Comments

Spam on the rise again?

By Dougal | Published: June 17, 2005

Has anybody else noticed a sharp increase in blog spam activity lately over the past couple of weeks? The number of firewall rules on my system generated by SpamValve was down below 40 not too long ago, but now it’s back up to over 100 again. The worst of the attacks still cause some brief hiccups on my server from time to time, but now that I’ve got a good set of automated countermeasures in place, I typically don’t notice it until after the fact.

Also posted in Blogs | Tagged commentspam, Spam, SpamValve, this-site | 17 Comments

SpamValve Download

By Dougal | Published: May 26, 2005

I only had a couple of responses to my call for SpamValve testers. One of the testers has already begun using SpamValve on his FreeBSD server. The other is tied up at the moment, but is going to attempt to adapt it to work on a Linux server sometime next week.

In the meantime, I’ve started using it to filter spam hits to my mail service. This was accomplished with a one-liner:

tail -0f /var/log/maillog | \
perl -e 'while(<>){ m/Mail from (.*) rejected/; \
system("/usr/local/sbin/svupdate", $1) if $1;}'

The command above watches the end of my sendmail log for entries indicating messages rejected by RBL checks. [...]

Also posted in Servers, Services | Tagged Email, Perl, PHP, Spam, SpamValve, Web | 10 Comments

SpamValve Testers Wanted

By Dougal | Published: May 18, 2005

I think I’m almost ready to let some other people bang on SpamValve. I want to get a closed group of users to try it out and give me some feedback before I release it to the general public. If you’re interested in testing it, and meet the requirements below, contact me.

Requirements:

Requires root access on your server.
Currently requires the ‘ipfw’ firewall system (I’m on FreeBSD). But if you think you can modify it to work with ipchains or some other firewall, feel free to give it a try. [...]