Some "#!#/"¤/&¤"! has been spamming my blog with, well, spam comments for about two weeks now. Real spam, V1agra etc. A lot of it, most of it for old entries, so I didn't notice. I assume they're using a bot to trawl the web for mt-comments.cgi, the name of the comment script, and because all Movable Type blogs use the same input field names, they're all practically open broadcasting devices, available for mass abuse by anyone.

I hadn't thought of that. I knew that unauthenticated posting, (as opposed to signing up, receiving a password by mail, and signing in with that password every time you post a comment), is open for abuse, but I figured all I'd have to deal with would be the occasional group of White supremacy nuts copying and pasting entire revisionist books. (You know who you are.) This is worse, and now that the spammers are onto this hole they'll keep abusing it until it is closed.

Other bloggers have experienced this lately and found solutions, but they all require you to edit HTML, Perl and other scary stuff. I can do that, but most non-techie bloggers probably can't. Some of these anti-spam measures will just have to be implemented in Movable Type itself, and then all Movable Type bloggers must update the software. This will take time. And then the spammers will think of a way to outsmart the anti-spam measures. &%/&#%!/"&# spammers.

At least we can't pin spam on al-Qaeda. (But wouldn't it be nice if we could? Discuss at length.)

Update: Oh my Blog. I got several new spams today from people who searched for typical spam entries on Google. The spammers are specifically searching for spam victims who haven't deleted their spam, so they can spam them even more. How weird is that?

Testing. Yup, basic anti-spam measures now up and running. Let me know if anyone runs into any problems posting comments. (And please provide a DNA sample to prove that you're human. It'll come to this, I'm sure of it. It's a slippery slope - start protecting ourselves against spam and Big Brother is just around the corner.)

This appears to be an automated way to exploit blog comments, aimed presumably at influencing Google rankings by generating links back to the cited URL.

You can't expect to deal with this by requiring commenters to provide real information about themselves. The reason we don't, when we don't, is the precisely the exposure to spam you are now having a problem with.

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