Over the past two weeks I’ve been battling the incest/rape/bestiality/etc.. bots. The attacks have escalated to the point I need to come up with a real solution. To give you some idea my list of IP banned addresses has grown from 70 something to nearly 800.
I don’t have the tech skills to upgrade to the latest version of MT which has moderated comments. I don’t even know enough to install the blacklist. When I have time it looks like I’ll have to close comments altogether.
Until then, you’ll likely see some of these links if you read comments. I can’t help it. There’s this thing called work that takes precedence. My apologies and hopefully I’ll get around to it when this busy weekend is over.
Peace
Updated 9/13/04: Movable Type 3.11 is now installed. Sleazy spammers lose, I win. As it should be. Thanks, A.
Before you lock-out comments, I just wanted to mention that I enjoy reading your contributions and views.
Calm
Hi Calm,
I’ll look into this more tomorrow when I have the time and hopefully will come up with a plan. Closing comments is the last thing I want to do.
Peace & thanks for stopping by (& for the compliment).
Incest, rape and bestiality, huh?
Must be the ‘loving’ ‘compassionate’ Christian Conservatives expressing their ‘concern’ for gay people.
Bill Maher’s wrong about one thing: Our fanatics ARE as dangerous as theirs. Ours are just less courageous and more insidious.
Hi R.G.,
There weren’t too many gay porn links but yes there were some. Mostly raping of women, children, racist (as in beating a woman of colour), incest, drinking pee, etc… well, you get the picture.
I don’t know how these computers pick their victims. Maybe they utilise a search function, who knows. But once they find a comment section that’s vulnerable they key it in. Why Johnny Ashcroft isn’t bothered by these sites that cater to people who like to rape women and children I don’t know. Disappearing people of colour who haven’t done anything illegal must be taking up all of his time. All he’d have to do is set-up a comments section…but then he’d have to answer questions from real people, too. That would never do.
Maher is wrong. Our presence in Iraq, for one, is nothing if not fanatical. That Bush, the man who lied to put us there, is up for election instead of sentencing is the result of fanatical support. Have you noticed that the Crusades as a topic is making a strong comeback? James Carroll has a good article in the September 20th issue of The Nation called The Bush Crusade.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040920&s=carroll
NPR discussed it today on Talk of the Nation.
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5&prgDate=16-Sep-2004
Here’s a more direct link for that NPR programme.
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3921982