Theatre Lighting Design, Technical Direction and Consulting

Charles R. Kaiser
Aurora, Ontario CANADA

Weblogs, Blacklists, and SPAM! Oh my!

My life on the internet has become all about battling spam. It's bad enough in my regular inboxes, but now I am getting spam via my site's feedback forms and in my 'blog! What to do?

For my regular inbox spam I have resorted to using a service called Mailblocks. It uses a "Challenge and Resonse" system so that only email from real human beings is supposed to get through. However, some spammers have managed to get past that! The other problem is that many senders don't ever reply to the challenge, and their mail gets deleted after three days if I don't rescue it from the "Pending" folder. As I am only looking at headers, this is still faster than having to download all of the messages off my servers.

For my 'blog, I have started to use MT Blacklist by Jay Allen. My favourite feature of this nifty plug-in for MovableType is the button that is labelled "Go forth and do my bidding!" when I go to "despam" the 'blog. This plug-in blocks many of the known weblog spammers. If some still get through all you have to do is despam the 'blog by clicking the link in the email notice of a new comment. You can also add the new spammer to your blacklist automaticlly. It is a very good plug-in, and I HIGHLY recommend it!

Now, can anyone come up with a plan to keep the spammers from using my feedback forms to send me notices about funneling money out of General Mombassa's secret bank accounts in Nigeria?