I’ve finally upgraded my WordPress to the newest version. There’s also a newer version of Akismet included, so hopefully when I deactivate some of my anti-spam comment features for the Blogathon on Saturday, I won’t get as much spam as I thought I might. If you see any problems with the blog, please let me […]
Archive of posts filed under the Spam category.
Useltons
Woohoo! It appears that the losers that got this web site started back in January 2005 have finally been caught and charged. See SEC Says Hijacked Computers Aided Stock Scam and The Useltons for more information. And even more info at the SEC: SEC Charges Two Texas Swindlers In Penny Stock Spam Scam Involving Computer […]
Vonage Abusing Your Friends
Vonage, the VoIP service, has a feature where their users can refer their friends to the service. If you sign up from one of those referrals, you get a free month of service; and your friend gets two free months. In March 2006, I asked one of my friends to refer me so I could […]
jeaig.org example at work
John Graham-Cumming’s new jeaig (jgc’s email address image generator) service seems to work just fine. The background of the image changes every time it loads. It would be great to be able to pass foreground and background color definitions so that the image could fit into a specific web site’s design. Or maybe some options […]
Finding a database of spammer’s postal mail addresses?
Since the highly effective CAN-SPAM law requires spammers to put a physical location in their spam, I was wondering if anyone has collected the addresses. It would be highly effective in SpamAssassin rules, as well as to look for trends in where the spammers are located. For example, since March 31, 2007, I’ve received 55 […]
Leaking Email Addresses from YourMusic.com
YourMusic.com is an online music service of BMG Direct, Inc. You set up a list of cd’s you’d like to purchase, then you are shipped one CD a month for a steady price (currently at $6.99). I registered with them on Wednesday, November 2, 2005 at 3:40:31pm EST. And I used a unique email address […]
Whois limit of three queries per day?
I’m researching some spammers that have been hitting my mail server pretty heavily since March. I’ve got a list of several hundred domains, so I’ve been doing some basic research on them. I’ve used google, the host command to get their IP address, then I grabbed a few at random to check their Whois info. […]
Vistaprint sucks
I ordered business cards a few weeks ago from VistaPrint.com. I used a unique email address like I always do. I opted out of allowing them to share my info. I also (like anywhere I give my address, phone number, credit card number) opted out of any sharing. For now I also allowed Vistaprint to […]
Blocking WordPress Comment Spam
Back in January I tried renaming the wp-comments-post.php file to avoid comment spammers. That worked for about 10 hours, then they started using the new file name. So I switched back to the default filename. Like I said back then “So unless you change the comment post filename regularly, it doesn’t do much good.” Well, […]
“Human” Comment Spammer
Wow, I’ve just received my first batch of comment spam from a real “person” (if spammers are to be considered people.) It’s all from the IP address of 121.35.151.27, which is in China. The first hit was this morning at 2:03am. “121.35.151.27 – – [13/Mar/2007:02:03:31 -0500] “GET /journal/2007/02/08/powered-by-wordpress-directory/ HTTP/1.1” 200 5080 “http://www.google.com/search?q=powered+by+wordpress&hl=en&newwindow=1&start=20&sa=N” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE […]