Spam target?
Dear all-knowing hedgeballs -
I'm occasionally getting posts to our blogs for approval that appear to be randomly generated alphanumeric characters in blocks of "word sized" text.
Thus far I just don't approve those messages, and subsequently ignore the email.
It's not a problem for me (I get other email that makes even less sense from people I know somtimes); but if this is something you want more current updates on, let me know.
As much work as you've put into this great site, I don't want some security breach to go unaddressed just because I don't recognize/report it appropriately.
-J
recent branches
I just got a similar type of posting as well to confirm what Jeff has seen.
Kris
Thanks for the report guys.
Good news is since we have to approve a comment for it to be posted the spam won't ever reach the site. Bad news is in the short term the spam will likely increase - and, for now the only approach it to continue to ignore/delete the spam messages.
Longer term Craig plans to enhance the comment validation logic to eliminate issue.
Thanks for the report indeed! I am looking into ways that we can block spammers with more ease without creating more road blocks for general use, but I'm afraid that for now the best option is just to ignore them (or delete them) from your approval list. If you don't want to delete them or are not sure how, no worries - either Brian or I will come across them when we randomly log in to check the system.
Hopefully soon I'll have a more helpful solution.
I have now implemented a quick and dirty way of blocking IP addresses, manually. So if you happen to receive a spam posting - please send me the IP address from the post.
You can either forward me the e-mail you receive when someone has posted to your blog (currently, only the lead author(s) get notification) or you can copy the IP address when you publish/junk comments in the system.
Click to view example of IP address location in the system.
This sounds like a nice fix. The spam isn't burdensome; I just want to process it the right way (i.e. not unwittingly assist viral entry into the site, etc.). Thanks for the reassurance.
well yes, the spam isn't much more than an annoyance - but at the rate that adam's blog was getting hit over the last few weeks, it definitely needed to be addressed.
fyi: now, after i block an ip address, if a user from the same ip comes to the mckinney tree they will be redirected to an error page. so, if anyone happens to get an error page (and are not able to get to the site) please let me know and i'll be sure that your ip is still clear.