We’re fighting against spammers at the moment, thanks to our use of Movable Type and the FormMail.pl script. The scum that are spammers have been using automatic systems to load their crap into the comments systems some of our Movable Type installations use. This has a two-fold effect – first it shoves lots of comments into the system that have to be tracked and removed. Second, it puts one hell of a load on our server, some times slowing it down incredibly.
The FormMail.pl script we’ve set up has been configured to restrict who it sends to, but spammer-scum just use it to send their own message to that restricted list. On some of our forms, these are politicians, senior executives, etc. While some may say it’s good for a politician to get a bag of spam (hopefully helping to convert them into fighters against the problem), it’s not a good thing that it appears to come from our domains….
We’re doing what we can, such as implementing the MT Blacklist system, changing the name of the comments script within MT, modifying FormMail.pl, etc. It’s just very annoying that we even have to do that, just become a bunch of scum are out to rort the system.
Honestly, if a spammer were drowning I’d have no problem at all throwing them a lead weight to help out. I’d call them vermin but I like rats too much. Perhaps spammers are the new lawyers in the jokes world, eg:
Q:What do you call 10 spammers in a bus going over a cliff?
A: A good start