Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Comment spam

I haven't touched this blog much recently (lack of reaction to stuff you post tends to lead to apathy), but came back today to find about 14000 pieces of comment spam in the last month. Ouch.

I've finally given up and turned off comments - as it seems that there's no reasonable solution to the comment spam problem out there which doesn't involve Typekey (I'm using the MT antispam plugins already) it's the only thing I can do in the meantime until I have time to look at how to run this whole thing again from the ground up.

I love spammers. These amoral bastards have ruined just about every good thing that the Internet's generated in the past decade. I was on Usenet waaay back when spam was first invented and remember the hoo-hah it caused then. I don't think anyone back then seriously expected just how destructive an effect spam would be having by the year 2007. Spam carries a lot of the responsibility for the Internet having gone from a place of openness and freedom to locked doors and paranoia. Remember the days when if you needed to you could relay mail through just about any host that came to hand? Seems almost unbelievable now, doesn't it?