BlogSpam I just recieved as a comment to my latest post about my mandolin, but I'm tempted to try and report it to the spammer's IP as abuse, so I'm not going to delete it yet. The silly thing about this is that I'm actually interested in promoting The Passion Of The Christ, which is what the BlogSpam was about. I've even recently made posts about that movie, and a comment on those posts would have been much more appropriate, and maybe not even spam.
Anyway, according to LiveJournal IP tracking, the spammer's IP address is 195.101.208.137. Looks like this spam utlimately originated from either France or the Netherlands. If anyone's dealt with BlogSpam like this before and has any tips on what I ought to do, let me know!
I've been toying with the idea of removing the ability to post Anonymous Comments in my journal, which would obviously cut down on this kind of thing. Now that you don't need an invite code to get a LiveJournal account, it might be time to get rid of the Anonymous Comment feature here, but I kinda like having it open like this for people who want to comment without actually setting up an LJ account.
I could simply delete the Anyway, according to LiveJournal IP tracking, the spammer's IP address is 195.101.208.137. Looks like this spam utlimately originated from either France or the Netherlands. If anyone's dealt with BlogSpam like this before and has any tips on what I ought to do, let me know!
I've been toying with the idea of removing the ability to post Anonymous Comments in my journal, which would obviously cut down on this kind of thing. Now that you don't need an invite code to get a LiveJournal account, it might be time to get rid of the Anonymous Comment feature here, but I kinda like having it open like this for people who want to comment without actually setting up an LJ account.
Comments
I want to turn of anonymous comments from time to time because I get comments from people who find entries of mine and Google and feel the need to comment on them. But as you know, sometimes these anonymous commenters actually give me useful information! And anyway my dad reads and comments on my journal, and I don't really *want* him to have an LJ account. ;) I just wish there were a way to block IPs in addition to individual LJ users. And while I'm wishing, a killfile for LJ would be nice, too. ;)
Now there's a term I haven't heard in a while. Go USENET. :)
I think there is a way to cause your LJ pages to not be indexed by web search engines, but you also said that you sometimes get useful random comments that result from searches hitting your posts. I guess its a toss up...
I'm not sure blocking IPs or IP ranges would be useful. Most IP addresses are dynamic and blocking an IP subnet could block non-spamming users as well in the same address block. Plus these days trojans install open relays for sending spam mail on unpatched Windows boxen. I'm sure open relay blog spamming trojans will follow soon... Spamming from static IPs is so passé. :)
What LJ needs is one of those sneaky filters where an anonymous poster is shown a random generated and mangled image of text and has to correctly type in the text to be able to post. This would cut down a lot on drive by blog spamming... Of course they may do that and I don't know about it. It's been a while since I have posted anonymously.
I've been thinking about not allowing Anonymous posters. Most of the people I know who post to my journal have a journal. I still debate myself on that issue.