Tewha » spammers

User accounts removed

Steven Fisher — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 05:18:41 +0000

I originally required registration to comment to cut down on spam, before Akismet was easy to use. It was a crappy requirement, who wants to register with a random blog just to leave a comment? So I turned it off, and the only purpose it’s served since then is to provide a useless vector for spammers.

Since I wasn’t using that data for a honeypot or anything, I’m just turning it off and removing all the accounts, even the few legitimate ones. They’re just not needed anymore.

I’ll be relying on Akismet for now; if that doesn’t work, in the future I’ll require an OpenID.

McAfee experiment: Sex life unchanged, but inbox bulging

Steven Fisher — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:30:01 +0000

Interesting Ars Technica article on spam:

From April 1 to May 1, McAfee ran an experiment with 50 volunteers designed to measure just how much spam a person would receive if they actually registered at all the sites that request your e-mail address. The total amount of spam that comes flooding down the system is almost awe-inspiring.

Email approaching Sturgeon’s limit

Steven Fisher — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:43:37 +0000

On average, spam accounted for 87% of e-mail traffic this year.