soledad penadés

repeat 4[fd 100 rt 90]

Akismet has caught 52.000+ spam comments since I installed wordpress. That was a year and a half ago, which is pretty impressive for a non popular blog.

Most of the comments come from pingbacks, so it's a good idea to install some kind of plug-in which disables pingbacks on posts after a certain time (~3 months), or just run a query to disable all comments from time to time, etc.

But I just got an e-mail with the definitive solution, and you don't need to install anything. See by yourself how easy is it:

hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,
I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it , its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq 45452xxxx or write me texxxxxxxx(at)yahoo.com , i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you

I feel very relieved now that I found the solution… I think I'm going to answer him immediately, so he can speak to the spammers and tell them not to spam my site. He's such a nice guy!

I was trying to polish it a bit more and then announce it but mr.doob just decided to go ahead and promote our latest idea, mapspam.net, in digg (feel free to digg it, of course).

What you can see is a very preliminary draft of a for-fun project. I showed mr.doob a wordpress plug-in that I was developing for getting spam statistics, when all of a sudden we began to have crazy ideas like "and what if we placed all these spammers in a map instead of just getting a table with percentages?".

We still have a lot of features to be shown, which are hidden while I finish the interface, plus the wordpress plug-in which we'll presumably distribute in some kind of closed beta way so that we can assess how well does it work.

Meanwhile we need the spammers to collaborate and contribute with their shit to the site! If you're one of these viciously perverted v14gr4 advertisers, for all means, spam it! We need your c1.alis, en-largements and all that in our site!

If you're not a spammer, you can also help us by linking to mapspam.net, so that spammers may hear about a site which greedily devours every spam it finds and shows it in a map (and does more things in the future, I hope).

PD: By the way, isn't it a great name? mapspam! it's a palindrome and can be read the same whether you begin to read in one or another direction!

Mejor mensaje de spam en mucho tiempo:

Estimado usuario de Online Banking !

Observar por favor que a partir de el 9 de noviembre el servicio de las en linea de actividades bancarias en Espana sera suspendido debido a un ataque vigoroso de hackers contra los Web site de los bancos espanoles mas populares (Banesto, BBVA, CajaMadrid, UniCaja, y otros Bancos.).

Por favor tener extremo cuiddo con tus tarjetas y cuentas de credito.

Para conseguir mas informacion sobre la situacion del servicio de actividades bancarias en linea de tu banco seguir por favor click en el link:

http://…(censurado)

Firma digital: iai

Qué perlitas, señor, qué perlas. "de el", "el servicio de las en linea de actividades", "un ataque vigoroso", "seguir por favor click en el link".

¿Y la firma digital? "iai". Prima lejana del aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

Lo peor es que muchas personas, confundidas de por sí con el lenguaje informático, no son capaces de distinguir los mensajes de spam como este de aquí arriba de los mensajes reales. Para ellos, cualquier frase que contenga website, online o hackers comienza a ser confusa y roza la barrera de la ininteligibilidad. Peligroso…

Please do not sign up to Gazzag - and if you do, do not enter your Orkut username and password. Or you'll end sending damn stupid invitations to everybody in your list and that is annoying.

I have received like 6 invitations from ps, jeenio and ayame (note: 6 messages from 3 people… something is getting repeated here and that's not nice). Obviously I am not going to join Yet Another Social Network, specially if the first thing you see on frontpage is a bunch of brazilian messages.

No thanks.

So, do you remember a couple of years ago when you began to receive lots of unsolicited SMS.ac invitations to join a scam-looking network with dark purposes?
Well, the nightmare is back. I don't really know if it's related with my recent job search, since I can't remember having updated my Zend.com account but I received this first e-mail:

From: Hande Ozel hozel@corp.sms.ac>
To: me
Date: Aug 2, 2006 1:30 AM
Subject: Be Creative With Your Code
Hi-
I found you on zend.com and considering your development skills, I thought this might interest you. SMS.ac, with 50 million users worldwide, will pay you for your application. There's no cost to you, it's fast and easy, and you get paid quickly.

For more details or to get started, click here. I’ve included some Frequently Asked Questions below. Please contact me if you need help.
Best regards,

Hande Ozel

Business Development
SMS.ac Inc.
Phone: (619)696-1300 ext 1301
hozel@corp.sms.ac
| 741 F. Street | San Diego, CA, 92101 | USA

Obviously I've removed the "click here" link. It simply brings you to a page with specifications of how to use (or that seems) the sms.ac api for doing who knows what. Obviously too, I didn't reply him. It looked SO spammish…

Then 9 days later I got a second e-mail! I then remembered why the name of sms.ac sounded like spam for me:

From: Hande Ozel < hozel@corp.sms.ac>
To: me
Date: Aug 9, 2006 12:16 AM
Subject: Re Application Development
Hi Soledad,

I am writing to follow up and check if you got my email below.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Hande Ozel

Developer Network Associate
SMS.ac Inc.
Ph: 858-729-3330
hozel@corp.sms.ac
| 741 F Street | San Diego, CA, 92101 | USA |

And even more, followed by the first original message, maybe just in case that I forgot what was that about… It's funny to look at the signature and notice his role has changed. From Business Developer to simple Developer Network Associate. Isn't it sad? And the phone number changes as well. Very suspicious. But I didn't care; for the second time I ignored it and guess what!

From: Hande Ozel
To: me
Date: Aug 18, 2006 1:14 AM
Subject: Developer Network-
Hi Soledad,

I haven't heard back from you regarding my email below.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you get started, or if you would like me to remove you from my list.

Best regards,

Hande Ozel
Developer Network Associate
SMS.ac Inc.
Office: (619) 817-1309
hozel@corp.sms.ac
| 741 F Street | San Diego, CA, 92101 | USA |

Oh! another phone number change! What is going on with this people? do they have so many friends that they need three different numbers for the same person?

Yes Hande, you can help me by turning off your damn computer and stop sending these junk messages. Of course delete me from your stupid list as I don't want to earn money fast and easily - at least not while giving any income to sms.ac.

And seems like he's done the same to more people. And do not forget sms.ac itself! Feel free to send Hande any kind of suggestion on behalf of me… :P