Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam....

Just in case you might be curious, TOP got more than a thousand spam comments today. That must be a record for one 24-hour period.

Give thanks for spam filters, because without them this enterprise (a probably a lot of others too) would be sunk.

Mike

UPDATE: The above is just a very rough, seat-of-the-pants estimate. I started a hard count at midnight last night, just out of curiosity. I'll update you at midnight tonight. So far, at 2:06 p.m., there are 553 spam comments in the spam folder.

I used to sift through all of them just in case a "real" comment had somehow gotten routed to the spam folder by mistake, which happens occasionally, but it's just too much work now. But just so you know, comments that include lots of links or that are overly long sometimes get grabbed by the spam filter. There must be algorithms that determine the specific limits for these (i.e., number of links relative to words of text), but I don't know what they are.

This has been a really tough week for blogging. I just have too much to do. Right now, we sorely need a new post on TOP, but I have to go get the car inspected. Have to.  No choice. I'm sorry, and I'll try to make it up to you next week....

UPDATE #2: There were 923 spam comments from midnight to midnight on August 2nd. Aaand...

...Zap!

Comments

[Mandeno Moments]

"I don't want spam...I don't like spam"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_eYSuPKP3Y

[Ernie Van Veen]

I once got over 50,000 spam emails in a month. Then I realized I had a catch-all set up on my mail server. DOH!

[Harrison Cronbi]

Blame Google. These spammers are rarely looking to get your readership to fall for clicking their links, but are piggybacking on your own GoogleJuice in an attempt to improve their (mystical, ephemeral...holy) Google ranking.

[Doug Nelson]

I added a plugin to nofollow all links and added a text line right above the edit window: "Links have no SEO value".

Didn't stop the bots, but did cut back on the human attempts.

With that quantity I suspect you're mostly getting hit by bots. I added another plugin called Bad Behavior and another that uses the stopforumspam.com database that deals with them.

I went from thousands of spam posts per day to less than 1 per day.

[John Haugaard]

If we could just channel those 1,000 spammers to be Ctein's true fans, things would work out just great.

[Ken White]

I only get between 60-100 a day. They come and they go. Every once in a great while there is a clever one among the chaff. Why someone would someone who has a creative bent spend time creating spam? Lack of a paying gig?

[HT]

Isthe spam is tailored for a photography site? "Hello! I am Nigerian prince haveing manny camera as LEICA S3 and PENNTAX 645D to to western union your bank ASaP! In great palace awaiting suit-case to include, which possess loving VIGIARA for to woman and also of KODACHROME slides that make memory of beautiful United State holidays to 1956."

[Mike Plews]

Erma Bombeck wrote a piece on making a fancy ham dish for her in-laws. She worked all day on it only to discover she had produced home made SPAM.
The SPAM museum in Austin, Minnesota is a hoot by the way. None of this applies to your SPAM issue.

[MarkB]

Ah, if only they were all "true fans of Ctein..."

[Jim Hart]

Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and Michael Palin really get around, don't they?

[Bob Keefer]

1,000 true friends?

[Stephen McCullough]

Hang on a minute. Is there a correlation between the 1,000 spammers and Ctein's fan base?
:)

I agree though; without filters things would get a lot tougher.

[John Morris]

Those weren't Ctein's thousand new true fans?

[bill vann]

DUH, welcome to the internet, apologies but what do you expect, we all get them I have 3 emails averaging 100 - 300 a day.

[Peter Cameron]

It's a possible income generator. Compile a list of the spammers' email addresses and sell it to Nigerian scam and ED cure spammers.

[Jonathan Morse]

At

http://theartpart.jonathanmorse.net/2011/08/mots-gratuits/

I meditate, with a picture, about the meaning of comment spam.

[robert harshman]

Mike, live your life the way you need to first, always. Blog, or work s/b second for all of us. Family (includes yourself) first, work second, friends next and so on. Best order for taking care of all.

Robert

[Steven Ralser]

and I thought MIke was too busy watching the Olympics.

[ctein]

I keep getting these e-mails from Nigerian princes who are anxious to sign up as Contributors, but they have a small problem that some kind of obscure banking regulation in their country requires them to pay me $10,000 by certified check.

I'm sure it's entirely safe, so I'll just take out my hundred dollars and send back the remaining 9,900.

Boy, I never realized it was this easy to make money!

pax / Ctein

[Mike Johnston]

"and I thought MIke was too busy watching the Olympics."

It *is* kinda funny that just watching the Olympics from 7 to 11 every night is enough to put me behind the eight ball all day long.

It's not entirely that. I've had a few obligations come up this week that all need attention--nothing serious or alarming, but all of them time-consuming.

Mike

[Robert Roaldi]

I firmly believe that the main reason we keep needing more and more powerful computers is to have the horsepower to respond to and clean up after all the viruses, trojans and spam. One day, the invasive crap will outstrip our cpu designers' ability to increase processing speed, and on that day this will all come to a halt.