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Things to Avoid

September 20, 2005 08:44

As everyone who reads the news knows, I have lately implemented some new abuse filters to the comments to stop a certain spammer from using my site as his own personal billboard. As far as I can tell, my efforts have been a resounding success. I've even been so bold as to detail what the abuse was and how I was going to prevent it. I've tested it and I'm sufficiently happy that it works.

So here's the fun part. The caught comments get pasted into a file that I can go through later. I mean, it's possible that someone gets caught by it accidently, or maybe I have a bug and someone got caught without even posting a URL. So this morning I see another succession of caught postings that Jeeves has so diligently reported, and I rush off to check the file to see what it was. And low and behold, it's a bunch of comments with just a test url in it. Specifically: http://www.test.com. And nothing else in the comment. Furthermore, these comments were being left on random captures, and not under the test comments or somewhere more appropriate.

Now, noticing this, I can come up with only two conclusions. Either someone is screwing around trying to see if the abuse filter actually works, by performing the abuse it was intended to prevent, OR, my friendly neighbhorhood spammer has come in on his own host, instead of the proxies he uses all the time to spam, and is trying to figure out why his spam isn't getting posted anymore. Either way, there's no place for this person on my site. And there won't be any longer.

So, for future reference, if you're not an admin of the site, you're not authorized to "test" the abuse filters without prior permission. I don't care who you are, you WILL be banned if you try. Thank you.

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