Trackbacks shut down

DMZ · February 24, 2005 at 9:02 pm · Filed Under Site information 

There’s a cool feature of our comment system where links from other blogs showed up as comments. I nuked it tonight.

After our last batch of counter-measures, the spammers began attacking through that method. Essentially, they’d use one of the update services blogs depend on for this stuff to send out fake notifications that an article had been linked, and lo, their spam would appear with a short bit of text from the supposed post (randomly generated) and a link to the post which led to their site. Which would contain not an interesting article for readers but advertising for — quick, guess — that’s right, online poker, the bane of all blogs featuring comments and, if you’ve been following USSM since we cranked up commenting, particularly ours.

So trackbacks become another cool thing destroyed by assbags.

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Comments

17 Responses to “Trackbacks shut down”

  1. Roger on February 24th, 2005 9:21 pm

    The thing I don’t get…does anyone seriously follow any of these links? Work from home, casino, pron–is anyone really that gullible/lacking for something better to do?

    Sorry you had to do that, but it probably reveals a serious character flaw to say I have never followed a trackback in any case.

    I sure hope these scumbags at least make a lot of money. Still makes ’em scumbags, but if they’re sitting on piles of cash, at least you’d have an inkling of why they’re scum. It would just be utterly depressing to learn that they make $329 a “good” month from their ceaseless and belligerent activities.

  2. DMZ on February 24th, 2005 9:29 pm

    Two things — they’re not just looking for people to click, they’re looking for Google and other search engines to rank their value higher because they have incoming links from sites like this one.

    And the other — I don’t hope they’re rich. I hope the universe apportions karma appropriately, and perhaps that thousands of people attempt to plaster their house, their car, and their person with advertisements.

  3. IceX on February 24th, 2005 9:54 pm

    I need to figure out a good mix of anti-spam stuff for my WP too. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  4. Jon Helfgott on February 25th, 2005 12:26 am

    I check USSM pretty (ok, really) often and I’ve never seen a single spam comment. You guys really do an amazing job filtering them all out.

  5. Tyler Dillon on February 25th, 2005 12:50 am

    I really like the term “assbags.” Can I use it in the future?

  6. Chris on February 25th, 2005 3:33 am

    On one hand I marvel at the abilities of the people doing this spamming. Their ability to find loopholes and exploit them is nothing short of amazing. I’d love too see what these people could do if they directed their obvious talents into something more productive.

    However as a webmaster myself of a few sites I know the pain they cause whenever they find a new hole to exploit and proceed to abuse it with rabid zeal until you’ve had a chance to fix it or remove the feature.

    Keep up the good work gentlemen because I have to say I’ve not seen anything like this on your site as of yet.

  7. DG on February 25th, 2005 5:18 am

    “Assbags”

    That is officially my quote of the day…

    For the next several days.

  8. chris w on February 25th, 2005 6:11 am

    Asshat is another good one, along with the traditional hole and wipe.

  9. Zzyzx on February 25th, 2005 6:36 am

    “On one hand I marvel at the abilities of the people doing this spamming. Their ability to find loopholes and exploit them is nothing short of amazing.”

    It just takes one person to find the exploit and write a way to automate it.

  10. Ty on February 25th, 2005 7:29 am

    Hmmm… Assbags… I like that, actually. I’m going to be using it if you don’t mind. 😉

    Pathetic people. They have the nerve to come on to a perfectly clean and fun blog and try to screw it up.

    Assbags is the perfect word for them. Suites them VERY well.

  11. tyler (jorgensen) on February 25th, 2005 8:03 am

    isn’t assbag an Office Space reference?

    which reminds me…
    hope i get to show my “O” face this weekend.

    now back to those TPS reports.

    Yes, with the cover sheets.

  12. Joshua Buergel on February 25th, 2005 10:11 am

    You’re thinking of “assclown”.

  13. Tyler Dillon on February 25th, 2005 10:31 am

    I believe it was a “no-talent ass clown.” As in, “… ever since that no-talent assclown got famous and started winning grammys.”

  14. Evan on February 25th, 2005 10:44 am

    “Why don’t you change your name?”

    “Why should I? He’s the one who sucks!”

  15. tyler (jorgensen) on February 25th, 2005 10:47 am

    my bad. you’re right. ass-clown it is.

    bottom line is this:

    damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

  16. Alex on February 25th, 2005 11:18 am

    Office Space rules! I use the Michael Bolton name (MBolton typically) as a nickname on a lot of websites. Since I am a “geeky” guy with an affinity for hiphop and it’s my unofficial nickname around the office, I thought it was a good fit. LOL

  17. bilbo on February 25th, 2005 1:34 pm

    no roundtable today? I am having withdrawls…