Lumpy's Corner

I am just going through my inbox and having interesting thoughts. This time I am actually opening all the spam. It seems there are some misconceptions about me...

I don't know about you but;

1. In my entire life I have never had a problem with my "member" size and, having a background in math, I am amazed that "80%" of the male population is smaller than "average". The two males who are skewing that bell curve must need wheel barrels in order to walk around without stepping on it.
2. Okay it has been a while and it looks like it will be an even longer while but I am confident it still works. Actually, if you witnessed the tent I awake under, you would be sure it works just fine. I have even mastered the art of doing a handstand for my first trip to the bathroom in the morning. Besides, I am not too keen on buying prescription drugs from some one who can't spell. (If you are thinking of adding "viagra" to your keywords filter don't bother just load these.)
3. I am happy with the amount of debt I have. I do not want a loan or a charge card. I want to work hard and pay it off honestly and fairly
4. I doubt Bill Gates is going to share his wealth with me. I do not think he is into that and if he did could we just call it "monopoly" money?
5. I do not own a home nor a car and have no immediate need to insure a mountain bike.
6. I do not wish to help you transfer money from overseas. Spend it there. I am sure the third world country that so recently and tragically lost their monarch would love the economic boost. I will pass on my part of the fortune to benefit the cause.
7. I do not have some long lost rich relative. Trust me I am a descendant of the working class middle class to poor. We have lived, for generations, in the poorest city in the country.
8. I am flattered by the fact that women everywhere except where I live have the hots for me. I am somewhat perplexed as to why none of them live near me and they seem to move every time I relocate. (Since I began penning this, I have met someone. She is all I need thank you.)
9. No wait... Here is one, "M33t me now. I L1ve ne4r U"... oh n/m... need a charge card for that one... hmm... maybe I can tutor her on spelling and barter?

Yeah, I am talking spam here. It seems everywhere. Fact is it IS everywhere and it is likely here to stay.

How bad is it? It is real bad. According to the book, Black Hat by John Biggs, spam will account for 63 percent of all e-mail traffic and there were 15 million spam emails on Valentines Day alone.

So what can one do? Well that depends on a number of things. One thing for sure though, SPAM is here to stay. If you are looking for this article to be the total and complete solution, don't bother reading any further. Until we come up with some other means of electronic messaging, we are going to have to accept some SPAM. The current e-mail format and system is just too easy to abuse. That is the fact of the matter. We must look at it like some type of radiation and figure out how to get the minimum dose possible. That is what I am going to write spam. Limiting it. I am sorry but some spam will always get through.

Well, I fixed the comment spam... kinda, sorta, maybe?

Lump's ongoing battle with the spammers is a saga which reads a bit like this:

• Lumpy's Corner starts to get barraged with spam. Not any type of spectacular spam or anything like that but just your garden variety typical spam.
• Lumpy deletes the posts
• The spammers return
• Lumpy deletes
• The spammers return
• Lumpy deletes
• Lumpy notices a pattern
• Lumpy takes advice from Geek and upgrades to MT3.15
• The spammers return
• Lumpy deletes but takes joy in the fact that none of their comments actually got to the server because of comment moderation and enjoys the ability to delete enmasse
• The spammers return and trackback spam begins
• Lumpy deletes but with less joy
• Lumpy renames his comment script and trackback script
• Lumpy enjoys 10 spam free days
• Some "paster" starts to spam
• Lumpy uses IP banning
• Lumpy notices he is not getting anymore trackbacks
• Lumpy wonders if he dorked something
• Exios tries to set a trackback to me
• The trackback is dorked

Lumpy is a bit lost here. I dunno if it because I renamed the script or if it is a bug in and of itself. I took care of the entries in the config file, hid the index and can run the script. Track back just doesn't seem to be working.

Sorry, be patient while I figure this one out.

Yours in SPAM CyberSP4c3,
Lumpy

Greetings Fellow Cyber Junkies,
I hope all is well with you. I just wanted to comment on a few things:

1. Thank You all for your advice on the comment and trackback spam. I have noted all of it. Currently my renaming of things seems to have it well in check. I do agree with the many of you who feel that is temporary. i am simply experimenting a bit to see how well different methods work.
2. Thank You all for the legit comments and I thank all the blog listing sites for the sudden jump in my site's traffic.
3. As far as linking to all those blog sites goes, I am in the process of editing my templates and will be doing a good bit of reworking the next few days so keep checking.

Keep coming back to the corner all,
Nice seeing you here,
Lumpy

I am rather pressed for time. I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who leave legitimate comments.

I also wanted to leave a special note for "wiki". I beleive wiki is a "paster" for several reasons, which I will not go into at present.

Dear wiki,

I am really sorry that you, obviously, suffer from major erectile disfunction and need so many drugs to cope. It must be tough. In case you hadn't noticed, this is mostly a geek talk place.

Also for your attention, is the obvious fact that your comments are not showing up. I spend hours on end trying to make sure all the code at this site is correct. You are a hack.

You need to do the following:

• Learn to spell.
• Think about what you are doing or learn to mask your IP addy a bit better.
• Get a life

I hope you read this and stop... Otherwise I am simply going to redirect your IP to some viagra site.

Later all,
An aging cyberjunkie with no need for viagra,
Lumpy

It seems the rumor mill is cranking away again. I am one of about 17000 people who reads spyware info's newsletter. Some sources are apparently reporting that there is spyware attacking the Firefox Browser. My sources, one of the more reliable being the above-mentioned newsletter, say it is not so. Once again, thanks for the timely accurate information. SpywareInfo.com is great for just that. This newsletter is largely the work of Mike who also owns malware.us which is a repository for malware.

The purpose of Mike's site is to exist as a service for those who develop software to combat malware. I have chatted with Mike in IRC (that would be internet chat for you Non-Cyber Junkies) and he is, in my opinion, a great guy. He was a major asset in my efforts to clean up the PC at my place of employment. (I do not have any problems with my lappy or home PC's because I use Firefox, Ad-Aware and SpyBotS&D. These measures seem more than adequate for my needs.)

Mike's SpywareInfo.com is a wealth of knowledge and has a very comprehensive list of download recommendations. What I am saying is that Mike and others like him provides a valuable service to Internet Users. Spyware, adware and other forms of malware are everywhere.

Mike, however, has a problem at the moment.

I find it most interesting that Lumpy's Corners became a comment spam magnet immediately after I wrote an article about the bare minimum one can do regarding e-mail spam. I am not implying that the article made me a target but merely amused by the timing.

Of course, this should not surprise me in the least for I had the bare minimum in place for comment spam protection. I was still using Movable Type 2.61, had the comments set to open and e-mail notification off. I was asking for it. I should have just re-named my URL to SPAMme.dumb. That, however, is another blog entirely.

Today, I wanted to tie off a loose end in my web log the blog I mentioned above dealt with how to prevent spam on your PC. More specifically, what you can do if you do not have direct access to a server. I also commented on what I foresaw as a worthelss legislative effort to combat it. (For the record, it has been in effect for a full year now and I have noticed no difference in my inbox. Many feel, myself included, it merely legalized SPAM and shall serve to make matters worse.) I promised to, at a later point in time, discuss some other options available if you happen to have a server.

I know I mentioned in a previous blog that I thought it odd the timing of my site's spam baragge. I also mentioned that Geek had warned me of a rather serious flaw in my version of Movable Type. Seems like some freak likes to try and force us to play "Texas Hold em' Poker" by comment spamming my blog. Heck we have a poker night at my Fraternity house almost every month and i still don't attend it and I live there. (Okay, maybe i do live on the Internet but the whole point is poker is not for me.) It was getting a bit old though. I was spending almost an hour a day deleting comment spam.

So I upgraded to MT 3.15 which allowed me to moderate comment postings. This was one possible solution but there is an inherant flaw in it. I spend just as much time deleting them. (Well actually a little bit less cause MT lets you do it enmass now.) Unfortunately, things actually got worse. I started receiving trackback spam as well. I was recieving spams at a rate of about 60-90 comments and/or trackbacks per hour. I noticed the attack early one morning while I was at work. The script ate about 3% of my monthly bandwidth in, what appeared to be, about 6 hours.

What did I do? Well, I started off doing what I do best, I found the comment script and broke it. I know this may seem like a ridiculous place to start but I had to use the skills I had. I had a bit of an idea as to what else I could try but i wanted something rather expedient. I am, after all, the expert at making programs and scripts not work.

Seems like my adsense has shot me in the foot. After blogin' about "texas holdem spam", that is the theme of the ads.

My apologies

Seems like "quick draw McLumpy" is hoppin' about minus a toe. In other words, I think I just shot myself in the foot.

I have been busy this whole year making sure I live up to at least one of my 12 resolutions, which was to write daily. (I did not promise to "post" daily.) I made this resolution for a number of reasons. One of which was the fact that I am well aware that frequent postings make a blog site work. Who wants to read the same old postings.

As a result, traffic to this site is up, I am getting more comments and e-mail, and Google adSense is even generating a miniscule revenue. This is all good. The down side is that lumpy's corner has become a pretty decent spam magnet. This was quite a problem for me and I spent a good deal of time dealing with it and writting about it.

I did manage to defeat the spam. At first, I did so by breaking things. Over the course of a few days of self education, I managed to beat it in a more constructive manner. More specifically, using MTblacklist and no-follow plugins. (Both of which are the subject of an upcoming blog on comment spam.)

Jack Vinson who has a great blog posted a comment to my blog on comment spam. Dr. Vinson wrote;

Lumpy- The name change thing is a good start. I wouldn't mind more details on what you did to rearrange the order in the templates.

I assume with the plug-ins you will look into MT-Blacklist and the new SpamLookup. I've been using MTB for a while, and it seems to catch the majority of the garbage that is thrown my way by the robots. It's statistics on my site say that 9700 things have been blocked, and 300 have been moderated since earlier this year. Of those 300, most have been spam as well. So it isn't perfect.

SpamLookup is newer, and people have been saying good things about it.

(Lumpy converted his URLs to hyperlinks)

I sent him a hasty reply and informed him that I would write more on it soon. Thus today's blog. First more detail on what I initially did to my comment template and index template to deal with this issue.

A bloggers battle with SPAM is on-going. Recently, I had a baragge of comment spam slipping through my filters. I decide it was time to try a few more plugins. I tried TCode and CCode. So far the result is perfect.

I have been getting a few of these type of e-mails. End user beware. It is a scam. Do not open. Do not follow the instructions. For more information go here.