Spam Assassin
Some idiot shoe company in the UK put the same spam comment on 46 separate posts yesterday.
I don't know how long it took them, but it had to be at least an hours worth of their work.
It took me all of 30 seconds to delete every single one, ban the IP address, ban any mention of the company and its URL. 30 Seconds.
I am surprised these guys keep even trying. . .
Sunday, October 07, 2007 | 02:47 PM | Permalink
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Hi Barry,
Idle curiosity (I didn't see the original spam-comments):
What makes you think they didn't use a spambot to create the comments that took them 30 seconds to configure on their side?
It's an arms-race - for better and worse, the tools keep getting more efficient on both sides...
Posted by: Ant | Oct 7, 2007 3:23:32 PM
It's a combination of scripts and really cheap overseas labor.
Posted by: lux | Oct 7, 2007 3:33:06 PM
You might want to look into whether there is something you can run on the server to block autospamming. I know that the Wordpress platform has something called "Akismet" that flags posts for moderation or just deletes them if they are from bad IPs, and there is some kind of upstream feature to the system so that if e.g. the filter misses a comment, and then 10 people manually block the same comment as spam, the filter "learns" to block that spam in the future for all users.
Dunno if there's anything like that for Typepad, but probably worth a look if this is a recurring problem.
Posted by: tekel | Oct 7, 2007 4:23:45 PM
The "Captchas" -- those annoying letter/number combos you must enter before commenting -- prevents scripts and bots.
Cheap labor, on the other hand . . .
Posted by: Barry Ritholtz | Oct 7, 2007 5:19:07 PM
I'm surprised spammers haven't yet leveraged character recognition software to work around the Captchas. It does not seem like a tough nut to crack.
Maybe some of the more technically astute spammers found it more profitable to harvest virtual resources in MMORPG's than to spam every blog in existence. Wishful thinking, I suppose...
Posted by: wunsacon | Oct 7, 2007 5:33:46 PM
Captchas are just part of the arms race, yo.
As the machines get smarter, they beat the easier Touring tests. Depending on how they're set up, they can be optically decoded, routed around, beaten via brute force, or even socially-engineered away sans cheap labor. For instance, there are bots connected to pr0n sites that will pick up a captcha image and display it on another site for a person to unwittingly decode, say a teenager who's under the impression that after typing in the letters he sees he'll be rewarded with naked ladies.
OpenID is probably the future for online discourse, but it's a couple years away from critical mass.
Posted by: Josh Koenig | Oct 7, 2007 5:34:30 PM
As noted here, those 46 posts probably cost 1ms of CPU times omewhere. Your 30s are 30,000 times as much time.
Posted by: wcw | Oct 7, 2007 7:06:40 PM
Akismet.com has blocked over 300,000 spam comments on my WordPress blog. You might check and see if it's available on TypePad. I also use Spam Karma 2.
Yes, some spambots can get past captcha.
Posted by: Bob Morris | Oct 7, 2007 10:54:26 PM
Barry, so what was the name of the shoe company?
Posted by: Jonny Q | Oct 7, 2007 10:59:15 PM
Did you send the shoe company a hefty bill for advertising briefly on your heavily trafficked site?
Posted by: TexasHippie | Oct 7, 2007 11:03:19 PM
Thank you - saw a comment from them earlier in the week. A long ad...yuuch.
That said - the real fight is why both to post it ? Does anybody think your blog readers will be persuaded to shop with a UK shoe company spamming the comments ?
That's not what Seth Godin calls an "authentic" marketing message. Think about it - even if you were so inclined - would you trust these people to see you good products at a fair price and provide acceptable service ?
Posting spam (even sending it) completely contradicts the notion of putting value in your marketing. At least IMHO.
And makes such vendors folks I'd go a long way to avoid.
Posted by: dblwyo | Oct 8, 2007 9:54:54 AM
I'm sure some company ad exec is reading this thread. Listen up, pops --
If you attempt to insult my intelligence with ads in places I refuse to recognize them, I will not buy from your company -- in fact, I will remember your company as fantastically annoying and make it a point to never buy from them.
The chinese takeout place that rests their menu on my door when a neighbor orders? Never gets my $$. Sonic's ads on TV? Same reaction.
Not all exposure is good.
Posted by: Unsympathetic | Oct 8, 2007 10:06:12 AM
I'm sure some company ad exec is reading this thread. Listen up, pops --
If you attempt to insult my intelligence with ads in places I refuse to recognize them, I will not buy from your company -- in fact, I will remember your company as fantastically annoying and make it a point to never buy from them.
The chinese takeout place that rests their menu on my door when a neighbor orders? Never gets my $$. Sonic's ads on TV? Same reaction.
Not all exposure is good.
Posted by: Unsympathetic | Oct 8, 2007 10:06:57 AM
