Thursday, January 15, 2009
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If you read the comments on my blog at all, you may have periodically run across a multi-page diatribe from a guy calling himself “Rich” or “Tony”. This guy continually reposts the same comment on my blog (among others). The comment, at first glance, appears to be meaningful and valid – it discusses the merits of the Strangeloop AppScaler, a great product that is provided by the company of a friend of mine.

I assume this spammer is somehow disgruntled with Strangeloop, or has a personal vendetta against my friend, wants to give Aussies a bad name, or is simply unhinged. Probably a combination of these.

Anyway, I keep deleting the spam. He keeps adding more. While it is a small thing in the scheme of things, other than providing as much information as possible (including IP addresses and other information) to the Australian authorities (his IP addresses are consistently Australian), there’s not a lot I can do directly.

So I figured I’d just let the world at large know that this person exists, so if you run across these comments, or if you are another blogger who’s targeted by this criminal, that you know what is going on.

And if you are another blogger who’s been targeted, please contact me, and I’ll help you get in touch with the people investigating the issue so you can help provide tracking information. I know they’ve already narrowed the search dramatically, and I’m sure continued trace information will help identify the person so they can take care of him.

And if you are the spammer, and I’m sure he’ll read this at some point, all I can say is: please get a life.

Thursday, January 15, 2009 9:32:26 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [4]  | 
Friday, January 16, 2009 12:14:55 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Wow, so one spammer can "give Aussies a bad name" ?
You do know where most of the world's spam comes from right ?

Sorry, but I do so hate it when people say the actions of one person on the internet from a country or state with millions of people could even remotely reflect on the rest of the country. Sure there are cultural differences, but you don't see folks going around saying theres one jerk on the internet in California or Florida, hence they all get a bad reputation.
Friday, January 16, 2009 9:28:25 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
I love the "call him out" approach to dealing with this! Obviously if this were machine-generated spam that wouldn't mean much. Since, however, this seems to be personal I think this approach is great. If you are going to be a moron and waste someone's time deleting your useless drivel you might as well get the "credit" you deserve.
Friday, January 16, 2009 12:11:32 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
This is interesting, you probably know how Joel on Software deals with spam, they have a way so that if a spammer shows up they see their spam post, but once a modertor marks it as spam, it disappears to the rest of the people on the forum (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2004/09/14.html) , almost a candidate for bayesian type filtering. Thats is the thing though if it is by IP (which it seems it would have to be) wouldn't be as effective.

Best of luck dealing with the crazies.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 9:17:52 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
@Bill - who said anyone was generalizing a bad name for a whole country based upon one person?
Brian
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