I’ve been heavily hit by a spammer for the last few days and I figured I’d share the story…

Despite the fact that the spammer is using the same one line text and always links back to the same website, Akismet is having a hard time picking up this spam and has let 150 or so spam comments through today (out of over 5000 total spam comments attempts from today alone!). Nonetheless, I realized pretty early on that I could create a second line of defense by “moderating” any comments that come through with a specific phrase that is always used in the text.

It’s so bad now that for most of today, every time I hit the “delete spam” button, there is more spam already in queue.

I decided to look up the URL that was being linked to and it turned out to be quite easy to find a email of someone who owned the domain. Despite my better judgment, I decided to email this individual. I politely said that if he was comment spamming my blog, I’d appreciate it if he would stop. His response was terse but hopeful: “I’ve deleted your blog from the base. Sorry.”

That email came through about ten minutes ago (and prompted me to write this post!). Since then, I’ve already received 75 spam comments from his domain.

Part of my frustration is that I recently received another message from my host that I will need to upgrade my account because I’m using too much CPU. I’m convinced that the massive amount of spam (including the stuff that gets stopped by Akismet) is the main reason that I keep having to pay more in bandwidth costs every few months.

Moral: The select group of people who get a kick out of making life miserable for others can make hosting a blog a frustrating experience!