Attack of the spambots

In my head, I had all kinds of “goals” when I started this little blog. I started out small and thought, I just hope I can get all my content transferred over to the blog from my offline document. I accomplished that goal. Then, I wondered if anyone would read my blog.

I still remember the first real comment I got from a total stranger. Wow…people are reading. That’s cool.

Then, Tech Support (i.e. my hubby) added a tracking program to my blog, and I was astounded at how many hits I was getting a day. The next little milestone was when those hits reached the triple digits. That’s pretty cool!

I’ve hit other milestones. I completed NaBloPoMo in November 2007. Speaking of which, it’s actually going monthly! Starting in March! I don’t think I’ll throw my hat in the ring officially this time, but I have blogged every day since August 9th, 2007. That’s 203 days…in a row! That’s pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.

I am also at 392 posts…close to 400! Another milestone is just around the corner.

Well, the most recent little milestone has got to be the attack of the spambots. When I started this blog, I set the comment fields wide open. All you have to do to comment is include a name and an email address (that others don’t see). The only restriction I put on the comments was if there were links, they went to a moderation queue. I sorted through those and would approve the legitimate ones and nuke the spam.

Over the last week, I’ve been located by the spambots. I mean, it’s great that my blog is out there and deemed worthy enough to attack, but it’s rather annoying, to say the least. I was getting upwards of 30 spam comments AN HOUR. So, I played around with some settings and have blacklisted some specific IP addresses and have set my moderation queue to catch a certain email address domain. The preferred choice of spammers? It’s apparently hotmail. For those of you using a hotmail address for legitimate emails, I’m sorry…your comments go into my moderation queue. Oddly enough, ALL of the spam comments have a hotmail address. Hmmmm…

At first, they were funny. The username was something unrecognizable, a jumble of letters. Then, they shifted to foreign words (Italian seems to be popular, for some reason). Now, they’ve progressed to swear words. Awesome. How lovely.

I’m not sure if WordPress has a feature where you can turn on the “type these random letters and numbers to prove you’re human and not a spambot” field on the comments, but to be honest, I don’t like that feature. I know a lot of the blogs I read and comment on have that turned on, and I’m sure it works well. Personally, I feel it’s more of a vision test than a “prove you’re human” test. Some of them are so distorted or the squiggly lines running through them make them hard to decipher without squinting. Squinting makes me feel like an old lady. Or, sometimes, I feel as though I’m reading my fortune in tea leaves. What does this random code mean? What does it say today? Will today be a good day? Will there be more snow? Just kidding.

I could turn the comments to moderated-only mode, but I don’t want to do that yet. I guess we’ll see how long it takes the spambots to break through the defenses I’ve set up.

If you’ve commented, but it’s not showing up, and you’re not a spambot, please email me, and I’ll figure out what’s going on. My email address is thecasualperfectionist @ gmail.com

So, what happens if your real name is an Italian word for bicycle and you use an email address other than hotmail? You may be in luck. Your comment may get through. My condolences…your childhood must have been rough growing up with a name like that.

What if your real name is very similar to a swear word, and you don’t use hotmail? Your comment will get through, but odds are your blog website is a place to get free prescription drugs, so I’m sorry…your comment will eventually be deleted.

So, if you’re a real person and have something worthwhile to say, please comment! I love comments!

If you’re a spambot, you aren’t really reading this anyway…but Boo! Go away! I’m losing my patience with you! And, I live with a toddler, so patience is already a precious commodity around here.

It’s one I can’t afford to waste on the spambots.