In an effort to curb the onslaught of comment spam, I renamed mt-comments.cgi, the file that is used for all comments. It’s not too hard to figure out the new name, but anything that makes it harder for someone to spam my blog that is easy for me to do is worth a try.

Elise Bauer put together an extensive set of instructions on how to avoid comment spam and renaming the cgi files that are often targeted by comment spammers was one of her suggestions.

I wrote the above two paragraphs a few weeks ago, and I just got hit with some of the most extensive comment spam I’ve ever encountered. Renaming the CGI didn’t help much after all. The first batch had about 250 comments and the other had 53. They both spoofed the IP address on every comment and delayed each comment to keep the comment throttling code from stopping them. They used the same domain so I was able to remove all the comments by adding it to the blacklist but it’s frustrating that they are fine-tuning their comment spamming techniques to get around the roadblocks I have in place.

It reminds me of a guy I heard about who has been writing fake checks for $2490. Why such an odd amount? Because banks only check signatures on checks over $2500. He knew how the system worked and got as much money as he could without putting himself at a higher risk of being caught and stopped. He’s made over $11,000 in the past few months.

We need to keep changing our strategies to foil those of the comment spammers. I prefer the idea of finding out where they live and filling their homes with fresh cow manure, but that’s just me.