Notice of Screening

[jpskewedthrone]

Due to a sudden upsurge in the last week of anonymous spam comments on my journal and on my managed communities, I have applied screening to all anonymous comments. Anyone else noticed a sudden increase in spam comments? Most with links?

Comments

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

Yep. Definite upspike in LJ spam, and a fair number of people now screening anonymous comments.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh yes--it's across the board. I switched my journal to screened anonymous comments.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

I've seen a LOT of people mentioning that they've had to begin screening comments due to spam.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Yup, almost as many people as I've heard complaining about sinus crud lately.

You Are Not Alone

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

If you're talking Russian language stuff, often apparently (I don't read Russian) with an accompanying picture that might be a pack of cigarettes, then yes, I've been seeing it all over the place for the past month or so. Very annoying, and a lot of groups have gone to moderation as a result.

[darkspires.livejournal.com]

I will try again. I didn't notice LJ had logged me off so if you have just gotten another one it was me. What I said was that I had two and that they weren't very literate on what they said in their comments. The comments were written in English but not very good English.

I have also noticed the incidence of spam has gone up on the email assosiated with LJ.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I've always screened anonymous comments, but I've seen an uptick in spam comments from signed-in "people." Mostly link farms to porn sites.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been having those, too. On really old posts. Often in Russian.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I have long since screened out anonymous comments (I seem to attract a particular KIND of creep and frankly I don't want to deal with that... so, sorry, but Anon just won't make it into my journal...) I also moderate comments from anyone with a LJ handle who is NOT on my friends list. It's a little bit of extra effort, but it does mean that bogus "Accounts" can't just plaster my journal with stuff I don't want to see there (like, not too long ago, a Russian "response" to one of my posts which included a large and very obscene photograph somehow embedded into the comment. I don't even know how they DID that. But I emphatically did not want to see it if I opened the comments to my own journal...)

[vg-ford.livejournal.com]

yep, and it's damn annoying. I've gone to the same thing, and my blog isn't nearly as popular as yours.

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

Yes :(

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Yes. I have been screening anonymous comments for some time now, and I'm noticing occasional spam on older postings, not my newer ones.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Yup, I saw that too. I already had screening on anonymous comments, so I went in to the security settings and turned on CAPTCHA for anonymous commenters as well and that seems to have solved it.

[barry-king.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect that if you x-ref the "friends list"s of everyone who says "yes", find the common ones (the intersecting set), and eliminate the linux and mac users, you will have a short list of people, at least one of which will have a piece of spambot malware on their computer.

And I'll bet dollars to donuts that person has recently been complaining about how slow their computer works nowadays.

I abjure, thee, good people. Stop the Madness (http://www.google.ca/search?q=malware+removal+tools+freeware)!

[wolfsilveroak.livejournal.com]

Ove on my IJ, I had to go to screened comments a few months back because of this very thing.}:/

[naomikritzer]

Yeah. I tried the "use Captcha for anon comments" option and that may have at least slowed things down.

[blood-of-winter.livejournal.com]

yes a ton!

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Yup.

I'm not a Famous Author(tm), so for me a "sudden upsurge" means from no spambots at all to two or three a week. But still annoying.

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

*nods* you bet