Great. If it weren't bad enough that my email accounts receive more spam than real mail on a daily basis, today my blog received its first spam in the form of a comment containing links to all the spam world's greatest hits: online casinos, viagra, penis enlargement, lingerie, porn, etc. And unlike email spam, which feels rather impersonal to me since the marketers purchase lists of email addresses, commenting to a post on the blog was a much more deliberate action.
And what's the return on the investment here? It's not like I'm a major destination on the Internet, and I'm confident that my regular readers are not in the least interested in this junk.
The spammer left an email address, but I'm not going to post it since it's probably some poor soul who had nothing to do with this, but whose email address occasionally gets used as the reply-to for a spam mailing. However, the IP address did get logged; the originator was posting from a machine on the CHINANET Tianjin province network.
Sorry to hear that. The thought of that frightens me, 'cause they could also leave some damaging code on your site too. I need to make sure I strip the HTML function from my comment box.
It HAS to be automated; I mean, honestly, it has to be. Because otherwise, what the fuck?
Besides, I know this happens - there are spambots cruising Yahoo! groups which join groups, post spam, and then delete themselves. I'm expecting to have to restrict replies to LJ account holders sooner or later on my journal, too, for this same reason.
bastards.
I'm not sure what I would do with my commenting system if that starts to happen to me.
Now that's chutzpah: respond to an entry about blog spam with yet more spam. I do have to give them credit for the more sophisticated and almost contextual-appearing presentation, at least.