I’ve often thought of spam as one of the worst things about the Internet. There’s the fact that a lot of it is done as an attempt to scame people, of course, so I don’t like that. But there’s also the fact that there’s just so much of it. Most of it is, I assume, automated by programs that run without human intervention. So there’s just spam comments and emails being created and either blocked by spam filters or deleted or ignored probably thousands a second or some other more impressive number I can’t imagine. How much energy does that eat up? I assume it’s as bad as NFTs and crap like that. The very fact that we need to have spam filters is a bad, like the internet equivalent of sunscreen protecting us from UV rays, except spam was created by people who are fine with making the world worse. It all saddens me.

I used to have a lot of problem with spam on the site, but judging by last post in my spam tag being from 2012, I thought it was less of a direct issue for the Book of PDR. That has changed. The spammers have dragged me back into their electronic underworld of internet evil.

About a week ago, someone apparently hacked into my website provider thing and used my account to create 500 new email addresses. I assume this was all done by bots and the emails began to pump out spam emails. I knew nothing of this. I am meant to get an email when someone who isn’t me logs into the account, but it didn’t happen. Also, supposedly I was sent an email by the company’s security people saying there was suspicious activity, but I received no such thing. I have to assume the spammers have ways around such things. I learned of all this when suddenly I was not allowed to send emails (though thankfully I can still receive them) and I tried to log into the control panel and I was locked out of that as well. Only when I got through to the support people did I learn what had happened.

So anyway, they let me back into the control panel and I did indeed find that someone had indeed created 500 email addresses using my domains (they were just named by numbers, which means there was a “69@contains2.com” in there, which amused me slightly). Anyway, it took me FIVE HOURS but I did delete all those bastards.

I did eventually determine that there were some logins from Oslo that I did not get an email about. I got an email when I logged in on my phone, and when Marq logged into help me, but not these Oslo occurrences. I doubt the spammers are actually from Oslo, I assume their bots just use it as a base or whatever, but now I have to hate Oslo for at least one calendar year. Sorry, Oslo.

As of this writing I do not have the ability to send email back yet. I hope that is changed soon, but I am aware this could all be worse. I love my website and I hate to see it’s fragile stability threatened by jerks.

Hey, why not talk about the spam? I used to complain about the spam in my comments all the time and I don’t want people wondering what happened to that plot thread. So here’s the deal: Back in the day I was manually fighting the spam myself, deleting the comments as they came in. When it got to be hundreds a day, I was goin’ nuts. But then Marq, my man behind the scenes, hooked me up with Akismet, some sort of program thing especially designed for the dealing-with of spam! How convenient.

So anyway, it seems to be working super well. As of the moment I am writing this, it is telling me that it has “protected (my) site from 22,643 spam comments already.” And the really impressive thing, to me anyway, is that the spam is slowing down. The robots behind it all are finally getting the point that I didn’t want them doing it on my web site. Isn’t technology grand? And also ungrand since it caused the problem in the first place?

Haiku!

I smell the ganja.
It’s wafting through the window
from some other realm.

Is that how “ganja” is spelled? My spellcheck seems to think so, but I’m no expert on the reefers and my spellcheck has steered me wrong in the past. It doesn’t even recognize the word “spellcheck”.

In other news, Marq is working harder than ever on the site. He’s got buttons and banners coming and going. Basically, just accept any changes you see over the next while for what they are, the hard work of one of the people on the site, but not the other.

As mentioned many times before, an annoying amount of spam comments are thrown at this website. Well, they’ve got a new trick now. The spamming robots have learned to tailor the fake comments to the title of the post being commented on. For example on the post called Stupid Over Hurricanes the comment said “Stupid over hurricanes.. He-he-he :)” and on Rolling With Dogs the comment read “Rolling with dogs.. Corking :)”

All of these comments have been made under the name “www.bookofpdr.com” which does make it pretty obvious that these are not really random people enjoying my site. But since robots have used the word “corking” on my site far more often than people have, I was almost reluctant to delete them.

I just went roughly two days without the Internet being allowed into my home. Seems I did not have enough money in the bank when the provider tried to take the money out of the bank. A couple times. Like since January. So they cut me off. But it is all taken care of now, so I am back online and I will start making sure that I am keeping more money in my bank account, I think.

It’s weird how if I were to go away for a weekend or something I would not notice the lack of Internet. I mean, it’s only two days. That is really not very long. But when I am in my home and I am having nothing better to do and I have had several days of way-too-long shifts at work this week, when that happens, I notice the lack of Internet. After all. It’s Two Whole Days! That’s forever!

I’m pretty much all caught up on what I missed. I’ve two episodes of each of the Daily Show and Colbert that I am about to watch. And I had to clear about 900 spam comments from the site here. I suppose that could have been worse considering that I’ve had that many turn up in a matter of hours sometimes.

Today I had a box of cereal and a carton of milk that both became empty at the same time! That almost never happens! Now I don’t have to go buy more milk or more cereal to use up the rest of whatever remains! Hooray!

Haiku!

Man lands on the sun.
He says “I guess they were wrong”
and gets shark attacked.

I’d be complaining about cleaning thousands of spam comments again this week, but I’m getting as sick of seeing myself write about that as I am about seeing me complain about work. So I won’t. And anyway, I have to go to work now. Which sucks.