Thu, July 28, 2005
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Baked Beans, Spam, and Spam—5:29 PM
Today at 4:48pm, we at onebee received our very first instance of legitimate comment spam. Occasionally, someone will drop by and submit an erudite, thoughtful opinion like "asdf asdfdw" but up to now we haven't had any online sales pitches generated by robots.
Ironically enough, the comment was posted on my review of the movie Robots. I'm certainly curious why. I can't imagine it's the best page in terms of PageRank, and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the product being shilled. (I'm loath to mention the product, because I don't want to add a single hit to their Google index.)
Hopefully, this isolated incident doesn't mean comment spam is going to become a recurring problem. As delightful as it is to run the site on my own homegrown back-end, it removes options like MT-Blacklist or other plugins as possible comment spam evasion strategies. Which means I would have to come up with code to combat it, because the current approach – I login and delete the comment, usually within less than an hour – is only good for very occasional uses. And a more automatic solution will be a pain to devise.
On the plus side, I suppose it means onebee has attained a certain status if the spammers are hip to us.
Bee Boy — Tue, 7/31/07 12:21pm
Intriguing spam update: we've seen a big uptick in comment spam this week – all of it detected and deactivated before it reaches your screen, thankfully. But what caught my eye is that this onslaught (a dozen posts or so) has been on the page for my Transformers review, which is titled (hilariously) "It Has a Robot."
The first time we had a bunch of comment spam (as noted above) it was on my review of Robots, titled (punnily) "Oy, Robots." These two articles share three things in common:
They're movie reviews.
I was disappointed by the film in question. (Just 2 out of 5 stars.)
The word "robot" appears in the title.
As a magnet for spambots, I admit the third item seems more likely, but barely so. I mean, if you're a spambot, do you really scour the web looking for mentions of other robots? Does the word "robot" turn you on? Is this just a coincidence? Are there any "horse socks?" Is anyone listening?
Bee Boy — Tue, 7/31/07 12:24pm
Semi-intriguing additional update: you may recognize the clever title of this post from a Monty Python routine about spam. But what you didn't know (at least, if you're like me; I found out today) is that the same Python sketch actually gave spam its name. I always assumed spam was called spam because it's annoying and gross (like the faux meat). But apparently it's because – like the chants of "Spam! Spam! Spam!" in the sketch – it clutters the message channel and prevents anything else (e.g., your e-mail; your food order) from getting through.
At least, so says The New Yorker.