Recently I've gotten some strange comments on some very old entries to this blog. Simply some person's name RULES! The email address and the URL are bogus. They are always on the same entry though. I've simply deleted them, wondering what their purpose could possible be.
Today the Puter Ho sent me this link, in which someone much more technically savvy than I discusses the phenomenon. As I understand it, the comments are markers, places the marauder can return and do evil. Probably the "attack" would likely consist of a lot of spam comments being dumped on your blog to try to get clicks from people who come to read what you wrote. In my mind, that is the most benign possibility.
Soon we could have spambots clogging up our blog comments the way spam currently reeks havoc in our email. It's actually kind of disappointing to me. So mundane compared to my visions of espionage. I was entertaining images of spies and terrorists using my blog to send secret messages. :)
Update for this entry here
Posted by Rockelle at October 2, 2003 02:42 PMSpies. They're everywhere.
It occurred to me after writing that article you cite that one of my solutions could be used just as you guessed, to send evil messages.
I had proposed sending a confirmation email to blog comment authors so they'd have to click something to verify their email address, but a blog-spammer could flood blogs with spam giving the address of their target as the return address, so my confirm message would actually be the spam.
So to do what I'd planned, the confirm message has to be munged to remove any other links, and chopped down to just an intro or summary of the contents.
It would be so much easier if we could just get a lock of their digital hair and use haitian voodoo to rid ourselves of these creatures. It also occurred to me yesterday, while sifting my inbox spam, how very very few of them are for actual viable products! They are almost exclusively for quasi-illegal or completely con-job 'offers', and that makes me wonder who our enemy might be -- it's not a matter of get-rich-quick suckers who bought a mailing list program to peddle their potato guns, it's got to be a devoted band of con-artists so technically adept that it just has to be an organized crime.
Gives a whole new meaning to "Syndicate this site"
Posted by: mrG on October 2, 2003 02:57 PMThat's kind of creepy.
Only similar experience I had was a woman must've done an Internet search for "texas baby bibs" and happened upon my blog – not realizing it's a personal site and doesn't sell merchandise. I'd written an entry long ago about sayings that should be on baby bibs. Exchanged a few bizarre e-mails with the woman before telling her, "hey, this is a personal web site." If she was a bot, she was a dimbot (bimbo bot?).
Posted by: Texas T-bone on October 2, 2003 07:46 PMLooks like they've hit you again :(
Posted by: homer jay on November 25, 2003 02:55 PM