Comments turned off
At about 2200 UTC this blog got hit by a number of spam comments from someone trying to sell his product. It seemed to me that as I was deleting his comments, more kept coming in. So I felt I had to turn comments off for this blog, temporarily, of course. We have been fortunate here at BBB that we haven't had more spam problems than we have.
If you have comments you want to post, and the blog won't take them yet, you can send them to me privately by email and I can post them, or you can hold them for a few hours until the spammer moves on to other targets in the blogosphere or elsewhere on the Internet.
If you do send me comments privately, please include your Blogspot url or whatever you usually use to identify yourself on Blogspot blogs.
UPDATE (0050 UTC): You can comment on posts again, but there is now another level of security to jump through. Many of you already have that level established. I won't say more in case the spammer is reading blog posts in person rather than with a spamming computer.
If you have comments you want to post, and the blog won't take them yet, you can send them to me privately by email and I can post them, or you can hold them for a few hours until the spammer moves on to other targets in the blogosphere or elsewhere on the Internet.
If you do send me comments privately, please include your Blogspot url or whatever you usually use to identify yourself on Blogspot blogs.
UPDATE (0050 UTC): You can comment on posts again, but there is now another level of security to jump through. Many of you already have that level established. I won't say more in case the spammer is reading blog posts in person rather than with a spamming computer.
posted by Wayne Leman at 3:08 PM
8 Comments:
I see this blog is now allowing comments from registered Blogger users. Registration is quite painless, so I would encourage anyone who wants to comment to register.
That's right, Peter. I discovered that there are 3 categories of people to whom a blogger can extend commenting privileges. When the spamming first occurred on the BBB today, I took it to the highest level. After awhile I lowered it to the level where comments can only be made by registered individuals. That keeps out comments from Anonymous which the spammer was posting under. Of course, if a spammer comments in person, and not just with a computer program, they can easily register and spam blogs. I suppose they could even develop a program to automatically register.
I may back the security level down to where it was before, to see if the BBB gets spammed again. If not, it would probably be OK to leave it at the lowest security level for awhile. We'll see. I noted that some blog don't allow any comments, others allow comments only from registered user, and some weed out spammers by requiring you to read an image fine number or word.
Howdy. First a poll that goes crazy, and then spam? What next?
Sorry to hear about that Wayne. My schedule has been tight so little posting except last night.
Rich, dare we ask: Is there life after the Internet!
:-)
I think there's something odd happening with the comments window since commenting was re-enabled. Prior to the spamming incident --- may their personal and private inbox be so full of spam that they repent of this crime --- clicking on the identity of the author displayed their profile and the comment window was left as it was. Now clicking on the identity "collapes comments" without any means of expanding them again; short of closing the window and starting over.
Trevor observed:
Now clicking on the identity "collapes comments" without any means of expanding them again; short of closing the window and starting over.
I have replicated what you have observed, Trevor. I returned the comments security to the lowest level (Anonymous comments allowed) and the same thing occurs. I made no other changes to the blog, so I conclude there is some change in Blogspot software. It appears that the purpose of this new "feature" is to let you know which comments you have already read and which are yet unread. But who am I to say, I just work here, so to speak! :=)
And now, a few moments later, we are trying yet another security option for the comments, one which I had not seen before for Blogspot blogs. It is a security word check, where the commenter is presented with a word which must be entered into a box in order for the comment to be approved by the software for posting. I've read that some people like that feature and others don't. Let's see how the spammer does with it.
Actually, if click the person's blog name (underlined and hyperlinked) a second time, then the comments come back for that person.
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