Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: annoyed
  • Music: Monster High, "Fright Song."

Seriously, does spam ever work? Like, EVER?

So far this morning, I have deleted seven spam comments, and blocked the commenters from posting in my journal again. I have also deleted five spam emails submitted through my website contact form (which proves, I think, that we're training spambots to pass Turing Tests, since you have to prove humanity before my website lets you email me).

I read a web comic called Skin Horse, and pretty much daily, the comment section is kudzu'd by spammers, until one of the admins comes along and deletes the offers of cheap drugs, hand bags, imported wives, and free money from a bank in a country that doesn't exist. So far as I know, none of the readers of Skin Horse really want any of these things.

My message boards are in a continual state of "behind" when it comes to approving users, because we have to work so hard to not approve spammers.

And through it all...I don't know anyone who has ever purchased something from a spammer. Most people are so anti-spam that they reject perfectly legitimate purchases, because they've decided that they're "spammy." (This did not happen to me, thankfully, but a friend of mine was told, on their own journal, "I will never buy your books, because you're SO SPAMMY about them." Said friend pretty much confined talk of books to that journal. The journal is gone now. Because that's how much we fear being slammed for spam.) All spam seems to do is waste our time and make us paranoid about clicking things. It's like the TSA of shit you encounter on the Internet.

I do not want .jpgs and spam. I do not want them, Sam I Am.
Tags: cranky blonde is cranky, don't be dumb, technology
  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    Help
  • 70 comments

copperwise

March 3 2011, 19:19:07 UTC 6 years ago

I have started getting regular spam posts on a particular CF post. Just the one post. I have no idea why that post. And I can't set CF to LJ users only, for obvious reasons. So I just keep going in and deleting them and notifying LJ of the spammers.

I'd prefer an extra button that sends 10,000 volts back through the Interwebs to the originating computer, but they won't let me have nice things.

azurelunatic

March 4 2011, 10:26:18 UTC 6 years ago

Once the spammers get the idea that somewhere is a soft target, they keep hitting it. And "somewhere" is often enough a specific entry rather than the whole blog.

There's a new "Screen comments from non-friends with links" setting in http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=privacy now. I don't know if this would be useful with your particular commenting scenario, but it is another tool.