Flashes of Panic

Email this morning from my web host sent a blanket announcement about load problems they’re having due to weblog comment spam, largely to MT weblogs like this one. They mentioned that they’re blocking the IP addresses causing the most problems, but asked us to

“…please do what you can to reduce the likelihood of your site being a target. Install any applicable anti-spam plugins or disable comments on your weblog altogether.”

I do, in fact, have some of the toughest available defenses installed, here and on a few similar installations I help out with. I’m more than a little concerned, however, since some recent reading suggests that I might be winning something of a Pyrrhic victory—the defenses themselves might swamp the system, given a sufficient spam-load.

So, I’m taking a few other steps as I have time today, which may temporarily break things. (I’m moving mt-comment.cgi, if you care.) In the long term, I’m interested the utility of other strategies like “captchas” and TypeKey but I’m concerned that they ultimately hand the nuisance caused by the spammers—who, by the way, provoke mental profanity so vicious that I actually surprise myself—on to you, the innocent commenters. Eeeugh.

Now Playing: Free Will from Night Opens by Rich Price