Spam casts pall over a vacation
June 9, 2005 by Mike Wendland
I’ve just spent the last half hour clearing out spam from my e-mail acounts and spam filed as comments and trackbacks to this blog.
I’m either going to switch to a new blogging platform or just give this up - that’s how much of a pain comment and trackback spam has become. Even though I have filters and backlists, I still have to delete and add the constantly-changing spam addresses to the lists.
As for e-mail spam, it would simply crash my servers if I didn’t find a way to delete it.
I located a resort here on Jekyll Island - the Buccaneer Beach - that has free wi-fi in the lobby, from where I am grumpily but gratefully cleaning out the trash as I post.
This is why I absolutely adore livejournal. It’s full of angsty teenagers with social problems, but there’s quite a few interesting people on there as well. You can use the friends page feature to aggrigate your livejournal friends on one page (and you can add an RSS or ATOM feed as a friend, as you currently are, for example). My friends sometimes give me crap for using it, but I point out that for $5/mo (or less if you buy more at once, or free if you don’t want some of the neat features, like a shorter URL…), I get all the fun of weblogs with none of the problems. I don’t have to host it, I don’t have to worry about server load, and livejournal actively attacks spammers. And it exports RSS and ATOM feeds if I am a paid user, so I can treat it as a serious weblog. Yay!
Mike, I’ve had the same problem using Movable Type. I’ve installed spam filters and it has been blocking most of the links, but still takes a lot more of my time than I every wanted to consider because I write on my site simply as a hobby/stress relief. The largest concern I have, aside from promoting some on-line scam gambling casino, is the fact that those spam listings are rumored to kill your search engine rankings.
On the email side of things, Spamassissan has done a fantastic job of blocking most if not all of the bogus emails and it learns as it goes to filter better. It’s only real draw back is the system resources it utilizes to run, and the fact I still have to download the message and consume bandwith just to send them to a spam filer.
Continue to enjoy your vacation.
I’ve had more than 400 comment and trackback spam messages that I’ve had to delete and block since last week, convincing me that Movable Type is no longer the blogging platform for me.
I’m considering WordPress.
Look at Word Press, I am sure they will be good for you. I joined textdrive.com, whcih hosts a lot of word press, and they have been good to me. Very helpful.