Oh, Come On ...
These spam "blogs" have got to stop. They are pushing real reader posts off the list and demeaning the site in general. Is anyone watching the store?
Speaking of stores, it's interesting that when you click on the current Viagra hawker's user name you are almost immediately directed to the website. Someone knows what they're doing.
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This must be a real headache for the sysadmin. I noticed that a bunch of them disappeared last night after awhile, but there doesn't appear to be a constant monitoring of the problem. I agree, it's teh suck.
June 2, 2009 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm beginning to think it's more like a programmed "virus". A computer server somewhere is automatically creating accounts and throwing up the spam. Much the way it works with email.
June 2, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe that's why some sites use capcha systems.
June 2, 2009 7:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
This doesn't seem to be high enough volume to be 100% automated. A Captcha system only requires a few seconds for human entry. If TPM were getting hit by over 10 per minute, then it would be in the toolkit. If it's running at 10 per hour, a human in the loop would beat Captcha.
craigslist.org went through some Captcha and reCaptcha growing pains about a year ago.
http://blog.craigslist.org/2008/06/fight-spam-digitize-books/
June 2, 2009 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we should hunt down these spammers to the places where they live and kill them, several times, then put their heads on stakes in front of the TPM offices. They are enemies of our freedom.
Kill their dogs too.
June 2, 2009 7:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno, don't you think that's too mild?
June 2, 2009 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lol.
June 2, 2009 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Steal their dogs, get them addicted to sports betting and viagra - then give them back.
June 2, 2009 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL!!!
June 2, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
STEAL THEIR DOGS?! uh, well actually I was going to get outraged, but sports betting and viagra doesn't sound like a bad deal... Does we have to be a spammers dog to qualify...?
June 3, 2009 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry. Pugs in chairs are already far too happy.
June 4, 2009 2:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
And now this one automatically kicks you to their site. So I can't even read the posts on the Readers Page - I have to get in through the side door. What shite.
June 2, 2009 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
All weekend we were hit by RichardW and his damn handbags....
I emailed TPM's helpdesk and reported abuse repeatedly, but they didn't disappear. Someone said maybe staff is low on the weekends.
Well, all I know is whenever I click "All Readers' Posts" now, I get taken to an online pharmacy.
Things 'round here sure are getting strange...
June 2, 2009 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Strange leads to much worse when you're talking about a website read by a whole bunch of people - through a whole bunch of computers.
June 2, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Well, all I know is whenever I click "All Readers' Posts" now, I get taken to an online pharmacy."
That should have stopped. It was probably due to one or more of the exploit blogs being on the list of posts. They seem to be gone for the time being.
June 2, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're right, it did stop. I can finally see All Readers' Posts.
June 2, 2009 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
For the time being. That's the problem. We were hit with them over the weekend, and they were eventually taken care of. Yet, on Tuesday they're back better than ever. How many really worthwhile posts written with care and tireless consideration disappeared in the meantime?
June 2, 2009 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are at least two kinds of spam blogs. The ones which use exploits such as page-reidrect are a different kind of problem than the plain ol' advertising gimmicks.
The redirects use exploits and that's very bad news. TPM should aggressively block such methods.
Stopping "vanilla" spam is, in my view, a lesser problem. Maybe new users should be limited as to how many posts they can put up. Or maybe all users should be limited to less than one new blog per hour or day or ... I hope not, just sayin' ...
June 2, 2009 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, I don't like the idea of limiting posts, that just defeats the purpose. But if this is the beginning of a more insidious type of spam, it is in TPM's best interest to get on top of it now. We've all seen the stupid stuff - this is a different animal.
June 2, 2009 9:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi LisB, please read my comment at the bottom of the post for a little more info. Also, thank you for reporting abuse on all of these posts - as I say below, staff is low on the weekends, so we do occasionally fall behind, but we do go through all the abuse reports!
June 3, 2009 7:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please e-mail the "report abuse" address at the bottom of the page. Hopefully one of the mails gets through.
June 2, 2009 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, keep doing this! We occasionally fall behind on abuse reports because of the weekend breaks and because of the sheer overwhelming amount of spam to be found on our pages these days, but we do review all abuse reports! You might see something that passes us by. Thanks.
June 3, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Quinn just told me. At first I thought he was kidding. I have not been experiencing the problem
June 2, 2009 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
This new batch is extra-evil! Apparently they've figured out how to redirect browsers ... so if you go to the "all posts" page it redirects to a viagra page(or sports betting; whoever's on top for the moment).
If this is automated - captcha would fix it. If it's a paid individual who uses a blind-proxy (or IP spoofing I guess) it's going to be more difficult to address.
Any way it goes, TPM needs to seriously focus on their platform. The redirect aspect makes this a pretty serious breech - users could also be directed to malicious code.
June 2, 2009 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only thing that makes it possible that it's a paid individual is the occasional "comments disabled". Really, though, what's the point in that? Comments are not the goal here.
June 2, 2009 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the risk of spamming, all this could be resolved by subscribing to AppRiver.com -- do read about it, Josh; they get great industry reviews for this very problem, among others. And, yes, my son is involved in the company, but that is not a conflict with their spam solving history and rating.
June 2, 2009 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah. And one of the gambler's pages goes to his gambling site if you let the page finish opening. The particular blog page has been killed by TPM but the user page with the blog is still there.
There is an invisible pic link at the bottom of the post text, with an error function apparently doing the redirect. It only works in Firefox, not my IE. Maybe I have redirects disallowed in IE...
June 2, 2009 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
IP blocking, anyone?
June 2, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I again lament the historic Discussion Table page of earlier Cafe incarnation. We moderated posts by voting. Fast-flying stuff went up on a Readers' Blogs page, but where people tried to write to please we had some good stuff and no spam.
June 2, 2009 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Slight twist on your idea, Tom.
I'd like to discuss having an historic Lamentations Table. Where we could just gnaw at things that made us sad, but especially, the things that made us bitter. Large historic events, or smaller personal ones. I've got a starter list, all ready.
Do you think Josh'll go for it?
June 3, 2009 2:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Goodie. Let's see ...
1967: You can't really suckle honeysuckle, as it turns out. Best you can hope for is a drip.
1975: The Marlboro man never gets sick and has to crawl home out of the woods. So not fair.
1982: Disco is dead - DEAD. Clean out the damned closet already.
1992: Thirty is ancient. Wrinkles aren't really laugh lines.
2000: Bush/Cheney
2004: Bush/Cheney
June 3, 2009 3:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
First old person on bench: "Oy."
Second old person on bench: "Oy vay."
Third O.P.O.B.: "Oy vay is mir."
Fourth O.P.O.B.: "Must we always talk about the children?"
I'm still pissed at the Beatles breaking up.
June 3, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was better before the Beatles.
June 3, 2009 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oy.
June 4, 2009 2:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely, you could track discussions over time without wading through all the following nonsense. A brief glance at the page of a thread you were interested would show in yellow all the new comments since you were there last. It allowed reasoned discussion instead of just drive by blogging.
June 3, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I must admit. That's one of the reasons I simply don't bother much at the moment.
I'm assuming that as the # of regulars drops, they're actually letting the spam through - in order to make it look like there's lots of traffic!
Hate to say it. But that's my view.
And if so, it's a death spiral they're in.
June 3, 2009 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think we're still in a post-election lull and the normal programming hasn't quite resumed yet.
June 3, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hadn't looked at it that way, but it's possible. Unfortunate. Do you post anywhere else?
June 3, 2009 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
How optimistic, and how nice to ascribe such crappy motives to Josh.
June 3, 2009 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have to seriously disagree with you on this, Thera. I don't for a moment believe that this is intentional on the part of Josh or anyone else. Other than the spammers, and I'm certain TPM is working on it.
I'm with Oleeb below, though. It would be very helpful to hear from someone (Al, Andrew?) regarding the steps being taken to abolish this trash.
June 3, 2009 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for posting this blog Missy and have to say I am somewhat surprised that Al or Josh haven't posted on this to date.
But, I don't think any of the spam has their endorsement or support of any kind.
(Glad you turned the light back on at your place.)
June 3, 2009 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi TheraP,
This is most assuredly not the case, sorry that you think that. We're working hard to make TPM as user-friendly as possible at all times, but there's only so many people we have and so many hours in the day....
June 3, 2009 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to see somebody from TPM let us know what is going on and what they are doing to combat this recent plague of spam.
June 3, 2009 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi there,
I'm Versha, the Cafe intern. I don't have quite the coding or web knowledge that Al or Andrew do but I can tell you that one of my daily tasks is to kill all the spam I find - or Al finds, or Andrew finds, etc. Unfortunately, it pops up almost as quickly as I delete it.
The other problem is that we can only ban IP addresses when the user/spammer leaves a comment. With the current system we have, we cannot track or ban IP address via blog posts. Please do trust me when I say we're working to come up with something!
And yes, staff is low on the weekends, I'm sorry to say!
June 3, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi everyone,
We're actively working on a software fix for these malicious cross-site scripting attacks, and before we have an automatic fix, we kill spam posts manually as soon as we see them. Please help us find these by emailing the help and talk addresses. Thanks!
Al
June 3, 2009 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Al, will do
Oh and TPM rawks!
I could poke them with my pitchfork, too, if you think it would help.
June 3, 2009 10:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for commenting, Al. And for your use of the term "malicious" - it defines that you are truly aware of the seriousness of the issue.
June 3, 2009 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Al, in the past, when finding xss and other javascript hacks in a blog post, I've just reported it as normal spam. If you'd prefer, I'm more than willing to message you personally about it, when I discover it. That wouldn't be a problem, or big time eater on my side.
June 4, 2009 2:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Pseudo, yes, while normal spam is annoying, xss/js attacks are much more heinous since they actively impair the function of the site itself rather than just distract. if you shoot me an email at al@ this domain, i'll delete as soon as i can.
June 4, 2009 8:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the viagra poster is a lame script-kiddie.
June 4, 2009 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Several spammers hawking several sites: Viagra, Cialis and a sports-betting link to name a few. With different user names, some with comments disabled (including ones from the weekend pushing handbags and such). Profile pages, recent reader post pages and various and sundry other links taking the innocent observer (and really pissed-off poster) to a page/site totally unexpected and unwanted. To say it politely.
I couldn't care less who the underpaid and perhaps less than intellectual typist may be - I care very much about blocking the crap they forward onto websites such as TPM. And the real sleazeballs behind it.
June 4, 2009 2:37 AM | Reply | Permalink