NevilleHobson.com

Yesterday, I installed an addition to the first line of defence against comment and trackback spam that Akismet is so successful at.
That addition is reCAPTCHA, a plugin for WordPress (with versions for other platforms), that adds a step to commenting - one that’s increasingly common on other platforms, too - which requires you to type [...]

I got sixteen individual items of junk mail through my letterbox this morning.
Home furnishings, credit card offers, pizza restaurants, insurance… it goes on and on.
Much of it has the pseudo-personal approach of “specially delivered to you by hand,” etc. Is anyone really fooled by that?
Today’s quantity is more than usual. The usual daily deluge is [...]

Following the launch of the new Plaxo last week, I have been thinking that maybe enough time has passed from the bad days of Plaxo that perhaps it’s time to try it again.
Shel and I even talked about it in last Thursday’s FIR #253.
Then I got four requests by email from friends asking me to [...]

If you’ve noticed a sudden upsurge in spam email in the UK recently, offering sex, stock tips, genuine fake Rolexes and the usual pharmacopia, it could be the result of criminal gangs using hijacked computers, says a Reuters report.
I’ve been getting loads of such spams recently, all of which have managed to get through the [...]

Spam’s been on my mind a bit this past week. Email spam in particular.
I’ve been getting quite a few emails - averaging two or three a day - from an address to which I have never sent email. These emails are all undeliverable message reports as this example shows:

Outlook 2007 beta 2 [...]

Back online after my unplugged week. It’s the first time in well over a year that five consecutive days have passed during which I didn’t write anything, read any RSS feeds nor take part in any online conversations. An odd feeling, actually.
One particular conversation continued in this blog, though (twists in the tale of Jupiter [...]

I’ve written about blog spam quite a bit recently. It’s relentless and I don’t think you can stop it. This morning, I weeded out nearly 200 comment and trackback spams, a weekend’s worth of crap to hit this site.

Luckily, I have the Akismet spam killer about which I’ve commented before. It’s my first line of defence [...]

What do Nicholas Cage, David Carradine, Susan Hayward, Richard Burton and a whole host of Hollywood stars past and present have in common?

Their names have been hijacked by blog spammers, according to Akismet which stops spam appearing on my blog.

A tidal wave of comment spam this weekend has been stopped in its tracks by Akismet. [...]

Is spam-catcher Akismet struggling today, or is this just a peculiar one-off?
As I write this at 2.00pm, the list of spam comments and trackbacks blocked so far today by Akismet shows 231 items, the majority from an IP address starting 64.62.228.X (the last digit varies). Definitely a blitz.
What’s a bit alarming is that around five [...]

One of the side effects of blog comment spam is when you get such a torrent of stuff all pitching the same thing, you can end up getting an education.

The majority of comment spam I’ve been getting in this blog recently - all trapped by Akismet - is to do with phentermine. No, not viagra: that’s [...]