So there's this guy Jonathan, and he made this pretty cool online image thingy called 10x10. Well, he also has a web site called number27.org, and he uses this domain for his email. And that domain slightly resembles my other domain 27.org. So much, in fact, that lots of people who try to decipher Jonathan's simple spam-proofing of his email address as 'jjh at number27 dot org' actually send their email to 'jjh@27.org'. You'd be surprised how many people can't figure out how to email him and wind up emailing me instead. And some of them are people that you'd think would know how to read, like reporters from USA Today and CNN. Boggles the mind when you think about it.
I used to just reply to the illiterate person who mistakenly emailed me and CC: Jonathan on that reply so that he'd get the email, but I got tired of doing that about a month ago. I shouldn't be in the business of hooking up Jonathan with the more unlettered members of his fan base. I mean, I like the guy, and his web project is cool and all, but I have better things to do with my time than be his email forwarding service. And honestly, if he can't be bothered to ditch that hoky spam-proofing job, then I can't be bothered to forward mail frompeople who can't figure out how to email him, right? Frankly, I'm a little tired of getting spammed by people wanting to email him.
This morning I decided to automate the process of letting people know they can't read. Now they can send all the email they want to and my bounceback message will help sort them out.
I had the same problem with nogas.org, apparently shipping companies that handle the spare parts orders for norgas.org (a Skagen Company!) ships keeps sending me stuff, so I finally did the same thing to forward the email, since there is about 200 or so emails a month with the complete manifests of spare parts being drop shipped to millions of locations....
Anyone need a spare turbine compressor fan mounting for a LPG freighter?
Scott
PS> Congrats on the new gig.
So that's why you've not been responding to all those emails, Scott!
Heh heh...
Posted by wee at November 24, 2004 9:43 AMAhhh, too true, dish network. Only you can prevent forest fires.
Posted by Scott at November 30, 2004 8:54 AMAnd now you know why I don't allow links: so their spam comments won't work even if they do make it though the MT Blacklist filter. And why I'm going to write a script which will disable comments on all but the last 10 or so entries.
[Note: when Scott posted his comment, there was a spam comment pitching Dish Nyetwork stuff right above his. It, and the 194 other similar spam comments I found this morning, have since been removed.]
Posted by wee at November 30, 2004 9:51 AMSpam comments were what pushed me to go ahead and upgrade MT.. yeah, I paid. My sister uses it for her blog too, and her kids want to start doing blogs. Figured it was worth it for the support and ability to require things like typekey reg to post comments.
1000+ penis enlargement, viagra, hgh, etc.. spams inside of a week were enough.
Posted by Miguelito at December 1, 2004 2:54 PMBTW, being able to use sql commands to blast chunks of those spam comments instead of clicking on each one in the MT web forms saved a ton of time.
Hit over 600 comments when I did a:
delete from mt_comment where mt_address like "%penis%"; or whatever the user address field is called.
MMm....Penis...
Posted by spammer at December 16, 2004 5:57 PMMig: Go google "mt blacklist". You get to use Perl regexes to block spam comments before they ever get to the SQL part of your site. Very nice...
Posted by wee at December 17, 2004 11:51 PM