I’ve been blogging a little lesser these days. And it’s partly because I have a lot more spam. How does that connect?
My blogging routine is simple. Each time, I’ll enter the administrative page for my blog and I’ll moderate some comments. I’ll delete all the horrible spam that is marked and scan it through just in case the software marks a false positive. And by the time I delete the spam, I am already less enthusiastic to blog already.
I use Akismet. And it’s great in protecting spam. Now I am thinking of testing out Bad Behavior to reduce the spam that I have to glance through to determine false positives. It’s not always easy blogging I guess.
*Spam*
Akismet has protected your site from 18,793 spam comments.
Hopefully it works. I’m quite sick of my layout too. I promised a new one is coming so many times but I never really had the time to do it. My time table keeps getting interrupted by work and even my weekends are messed up due to work sometimes. It really sucks when they mess your off days and get you to come back. Sure they’ll return you with your day off another time, but it’s just not the same. Just different.
Several of Nafcom’s comments are eaten up by the hungry Akismet plugin in WordPress. Now, I am trying Akismet Worst Offenders Extension to see if it works better.
Akismet saved me a lot of time maintain a blog and I can’t just deactivate it. Once deactivated, I’ll get hundreds of spam per day! And that’s just too hard to maintain.
I’ll hope the plugin modification would help. If you’re sure you comment and yet your comment just doesn’t appear, it is either moderated or caught by Akismet spam filter.
Akismet tends to catch false positives. I’m annoyed but can’t do much except to visit my list my comments and marked the legitimate comments off the spam list. Hopefully Akismet would improve soon.
If only there aren’t spammers…
It seems like my blog is badly hit by spam this week, with more than 100 spam per day. I don’t know what’s going on. Never has it been that bad. While spam filters are deployed in the comments section, spam may still sip through. I use Akismet as my spam filter and further moderate email address. Basically only email address that has been approved would appear.
Frankly, I don’t know how long this would last since spammers seem to be getting smarter.
I’ll be busy the coming week so I won’t be blogging as much already. If you have noticed, my blogging rate increased. I streamlined my blogging process a little by using more plugins. I’m still trying to improve the web design to make reading and organizing even easier.
I’m trying to write a program as part of learning. It’s something to resize my images and apply a watemark on them. I trying to write it with C# .NET. I just thought I should program something that may be useful for me when I learn. It sure beats silly jackpot programs, randomizers and Hello-worlds.
I think to a certain extend, spammers are in a fix. With spam filters improving so much, most of the spam gets trapped.
As spammer find new methods to break through these filters, spam filters are constantly improving too. Now it may seem that spammers are at a losing end.
Spam filters work by detecting a pattern in your email to see if that email message is an advertisement or something to cheat you.
Take a look at one of the spam I received in Gmail (want a Gmail invite?).
From: Sara Helms
To: dew [at] beconfused.com
Date: May 19, 2006 3:34 AM
Subject: composed
_(Click to enlarge to view contents.)_
I received 3 of these mails already, all the same content, just different subject and from address.
By using images, it poses problems for spam detectors to read what is in the text. I don’t think any spam filter deploy text recognition abilities. They’re just too resource intensive.
Mark is the second most spammed person online.
I use Akismet to trap my spam. It works very well for me.
Just moments ago, I answer my door and somebody was there trying to sell me sausages and pork floss. My father was quite annoyed about that, he says this isn’t the first time it happen. Have I just been spammed by pork floss sellers? I’m usually spammed by Viagra sellers online. And offline, it’s just sausages and pork floss.
Somebody actually spammed my blog to tell me to visit links to a church. Dude, that’s totally misguided. Didn’t the bible tells you not to spam?
A new comment on the post #809 “about//tagging” is waiting for your approval
http://beconfused.com/blog/2006/04/26/what-are-folder-categories-and-tagging/
Author : ej (IP: 202.52.68.109 , 202.52.68.109)
E-mail : test@test.com
URI :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=202.52.68.109
Comment:
Hi, I would like to invite you all to visit
http://www.newcreation.org.sg/testimonies/testimonies.htm
http://www.newcreation.org.sg/resources/video/videomessage.htm
Okay, it probably didn’t. Bad move. I hope the New Creation church is not responsible for spamming.
Yay! //beconfused celebrates 700 posts of crap. My posting rates are getting lower these days. And that’s because of some restrictions. I don’t want to visit my web site using the army computers as they are:
# Generally slow computers that screams “trash me” when each application hangs.
# Curious eyes often pry on what I surf - that means no blog, email and reading nerdy stuff. [Nerdy stuff bad; nerdy ain't fitting well with the army guys.]
# The army has a list of web sites all the computers visit. It’s a rumour but I think I am confident to confirm it since it’s so easy to get a log file with those information anyway.
So that’s no blogging. No comment moderation. Sorry if your comments got stuck. I got an off on coming Monday and am quite happy about it now. I tried so hard to apply for an off day, they just keep refusing to let me have it! Now I got my off day with strings attached - I promised to return immediately if something crops up.
I notice that the almighty WordPress 2.51 has been release and can’t wait to upgrade it. I’ll do so once I resolve some FTP (File Transfer Protocol) problems with my internet service provider.
By the way, Akismet - the spam filter I deploy - is totally amazing. My spam level is down 99% I tell you! It’s caught lots of spam comments since installation.
My most popular post is just a photo of Jay Chou (with 75 comments at present). Most loyal commentor is probably Nafcom - who blogs about ICQ and Opera from Germany! Thanks to all readers.
By the way, thanks to all the visitors who clicked on my Google advertisements. I can’t identify anyone but I get about 1 or 2 clicks a day (I don’t click it). It helps me pay for my blog’s web hosting. So do click if you see advertisements that interests you. 
