You know, I think of myself as a pretty prolific blogger. With over 1,100 posts in under two years, its hard to find others who can match my output. So would it surprise you to learn that even with multiple anti-spam measures in place, there are 100 Spams posted to OMB for every post I write!

That’s right. Akismet alone has saved you guys from reading over 100,000 spam comments, so a big huge thanks goes out to Matt Mullenweg and the gang over at Automattic for offering this service.

Lately I’ve noticed some new and disturbing trends in blog spamming techniques. Among the most prevalent are commenters who spend time building up a considerable number of comment back links on a seemingly non-commercial site in order to later convert that site into a commercial free-for-all.

This behavior is inherently unethical. Bloggers, like myself, only allow links to be associated with commenter’s names for the purpose of getting to know who they are, not so our visitors will follow links only to be subjected to commercial solicitation. Posing as legitimate is nothing new, spammers have been faking regular commenter names for a while now.

On this blog, my own Terms of Use specifically prohibit such activity - though I have to delete posts all day, every day for violating them. On this blog alone Akismet has marked 71,000 Spam comments. And that is nowhere near the total number of Spammers stopped.
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News that shouldn’t be missed:

• Miniature Earth (Must see!)
• Crack Users Do More Time Than People Convicted of Manslaughter
• Five Years in Jail for Porn Spammers
• It’s Now Illegal to Feed the Homeless
• Scientists Invent 30 Year Continuous Power Laptop Battery

Have a great weekend!

Lately I’ve noticed some sneaky bastard(s) Spammer has been posing as regular commentors and trying to post comments with their names, but using an alternate URL. A couple of you have noticed and caught this as well, and I would encourage everyone to help me keep an eye out for this kind of thing in the future.

SPAM sucks doesn’t it? Trust me… I know. I created this video as an open message for the entire blogging community, but also specifically to help educate my own readers about some of the issues we’re facing on One Man’s Blog currently.

As the popularity of this blog has increased, so have the number of attacks from automated systems wishing to spam the comments on every single post. This can create a serious nightmare for a blogger like myself because, after all, there is only one of me.
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It pains me to report this, because the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form version 2 from Mike Cherim and Mike Jolley seems to be a nice contact form for Wordpress, but the fact remains that this plug-in is dangerous and designed to secretly Spam blogs on which it is placed.

This stems from the fact there is an option that users believe will disable the display of credit links back to the author’s web sites; however, this option does not actually remove the links. It merely makes them invisible - and this is enough to cause Google to remove a site.
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Have you noticed that Outlook’s native Spam protection is severely lacking? Well, there is a great little freeware application called SpamAware which will increase your Spam fighting abilities.

The software installs quickly and easily and works as advertised. It adds a number of new options and works with both Outlook and Outlook Express. The software is also written by a very nice guy, Joachim Marder, whom I remember helping beta test another program for many years ago called Treesize.
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What’s the most unethical thing you can do with a Business Card? Post it on Jigsaw.com.

I give Jim Fowler, CEO and co-founder, full credit for ingenuity in coming up with the idea for this site. Just like I give the first real spammers credit for creativity as well. Heck, I guess while we’re handing out credit we might as well credit Jack the Ripper for never getting caught, and throw in a little for whomever made Jimmy Hoffa disappear.
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