1 down 77,000 to go!

By: Qwaider

On:Thursday, August 28, 2008 10:36:38 PM
In:Blogging Tips
Viewed: (4971) times

Currently 4.6/5 Stars.
1
2
3
4
5

Rated 4.6/5 stars (110 votes cast) Thanks for your vote!

One of the most interesting things one of my spammers was doing is actually object to the fact that he's a spammer! A feature I added for legitimate users to be able to unblock themselves in case my Qwaider Shield decided it's a bad user.

The interesting thing is that this guy was going out of his way to spam. I mean really out of his way. The way he kept objecting (and annoying me) lead me to add a new feature to Qwaider shield not previously available. Specifically for people who abuse accessibility features like the ability to object

178 spam attempts later... the guy just quit!

Who said you can't stop spam by making them lose hope?

Apparently, many spammers keep at it because they're hopeful that some specific permutation will eventually trigger a hole in the system and somehow allow them to get through.

What else does a spammer have more than time? They can just try everything, while the owners don't have the luxury of tracking everything ...

So, making them lose all hope that their attempts are going to be fruitful is definitely worth all the work invested in it. The end result was clear! The guy gave up!

What makes this interesting is the following weird (but I'm suspecting growing) trend..

The guy posts under benign names
He adds a number of links in the comment/email that are all fine and point to reputable sites
One of the 7 or so links end up on a malware/spam/advertising site
Apparently 2 and 3 above are there to obfuscate any system that handles spam "by weight"
The bot is a little bit more intelligent as it was able to, (1) find the right form (not easy), and (2) continue after the initial "you are spam" page! (pretty smart)

I suspect we'll see more of these in the future ... But this round, I scored a direct hit! I only have 77,000 to go

Other Memories Documented on August 28

Socially speaking.....
by: Qwaider.
In: 2011
Viewed: (4662) times

Chapters.....
by: Qwaider.
In: 2008
Viewed: (4192) times

They all fake it!..
by: Qwaider.
In: 2007
Viewed: (7116) times

Blast From the past..
by: Qwaider.
In: 2006
Viewed: (7398) times

The Q..phenomenon!!..
by: Hayati.
In: 2006
Viewed: (11693) times

« Do you ... Anonymous?

Meeting Roba... »

Memories....

#1
Yazan
Said
On: 8/29/2008 2:04:28 AM

I feel for you man.
You must have a tough job dealing with such people.
But yet again, you go to other people's blogs and pick up fights :)
You should cool it.

PS. Your e-mail made me laugh so hard. When I read the first part, I was going to go to your post entry and show you and example of why 'atheists care', but then I scrolled down and found out it was you.

#2
KJ
Said
On: 8/29/2008 11:22:31 AM

I was a happy man until I joined more aggregators than I probably need and now my spam count is increasing. Not like yours ofcourse :P but it becomes a hassle when I go through them to look for a genuine comment caught up in the middle

People have too much time on their hands