Spam Attacks
January 26, 2007
Mr Papa’s World is constantly under attack from spammers. Luckily, I have some pretty good tools in place to stop these idiots. I thought I would pass along some statistics from spam attacks and how effective my tools (I didn’t write them) have been at stopping them.
I run Akismet which attempts to stop comment spam. In the approximately 6 months that I have been running it, Akismet has block 6495 comment spam attempts to date. Most of these spam bots are attempting to post comments about drugs, gambling or sex things. You the reader of Mr Papa’s World see very little of this as its been very effective. Occasionally, a rare spam comment gets through. Every once in a while there is a false positive too. I still try to review all the spam caught by Akismet and make sure it really is spam.
Akismet is actually not kept very busy these days. About one month ago, I installed Bad Behavior to stop spam bots before they actually get to my site and use up bandwidth. It too has been effective and thus the spam bots are stopped before they ever even can make a spam comment for Akismet to catch. Bad Behavior is stopping approximately 15,000 spam attacks every 7 days.
Bad Behavior and Akismet have proven to be a very effective tool in stopping spam from Mr Papa’s World and not wasting bandwidth.
In addition to the spam comments, the spam bots have attempted to overpower the shoutbox on the right hand sidebar. The shoutbox includes some built in spam protection and to date has stopped 1306 spam bots from posting spam to the shoutbox.
I don’t know why the spam bots are after me, I cant be that popular a site. The situation is even much worse for high traffic site, where the spam comments each day can number in the ten thousands. I shall continue the fight against spam.
Technology Update
January 23, 2007
Today, my new internet service was installed and I couldn’t be happier. I said that a year ago when the old internet service was turned on, but things get better with time. After todays install, I am able to get a solid 1 – 1.5M download and 700k upload. The best part is that no throttle back after a small period of time. My new provider also promises bandwidth increases in the new future.
You may remember my Christmas present for this past year, a Logitech Harmony 1000 remote control. Well, it still hasn’t shipped as Logitech continues to delay the release of the product. Today, I canceled my order.
It’s not all bad though, because I ordered a new computer instead. My current computer is 4 years old. Recent purchases have been new computer for Suzanne and the kids. Finally, it was my turn for a new computer. This one continues to struggle and is showing its age. So, with a new computer and a new internet connection, I should be able to own in America’s Army. The computer is due to arrive in about 1 week. Its not the most modern available, but a definite upgrade from this old computer.
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