Spamlib?

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

I posted my thoughts on fanlibdotcom back when things were starting to get messy. Within the past ten days, that post (and that post alone) has been hit with anonymous spammers. The IP addresses are all different and their message is always the same.

I've screened them all (because they piss me off) but took a screencap, if anyone's interested.


Anyone have any idea what may be going on here?


ETA: The spambots were just lost in the time-delayed tubes of the internet, it seems. :)

Comments

[a-white-rain.livejournal.com]

the fuck?

[oconel]

I've been getting spam comments on random posts (mainly old ones) and some of my friends are not allowing anonymous comments any more because of the spam. Maybe it's just spam?

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

What's confused me is that it's just that post that's gotten it.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

I'm getting exactly the same ones on a post I wrote some time ago about rape for Blog Against Sexual Violence Day. If the post was linked on a lot of sites, that may be why (mine was linked on four or five off-LJ sites.)

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I've gotten a bunch of those too, on my post about the FanLib TOS. I think what they do is look for posts that have high traffic and post their spam there, on the theory that it's most likely to be seen on a high-popularity post. My TOS post has gotten more links and references than anything else I've ever posted, by an order of magnitude, and the one that attracted all the spam previously was an older post which also had a couple of off-LJ links, so it seems to fit. It's not FanLib, it's traffic, like putting your billboard alongside a highway rather than in someone's private driveway. :P

Angie

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's that this one's gotten a number of outside links (rather than the relatively steady traffic on my C. Clare one). I know my ljtoys monitor went nuts when Making Light & Feministsf linked to me . . . but that's a long while back, too.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I got some high-profile outside links too. And yeah, it was, what, a month or more ago? But spammers are always out there and they're not always smart about what they link to -- they see traffic or some key links and there they go. [nod] Before the FanLib thing, 95% of my comment spam was hitting this one post I did about gay sheep that got an outside link or two, and it was still drawing spam comments even a year or more later, when no one had read it in ages. [eyeroll] They're idiots, but fairly predictable.

Angie

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Hm--Well, I auto-screened all anon comments on that post. If it keeps up I may block anonymous commenters altogether.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I just keep deleting. I really don't want to discourage legitimate anonymous commenters. I don't get that many but it's just part of being... hospitable? :P Something like that. I'd rather keep my journal completely open as long as I can. And I'm online most of my non-sleeping time anyway so I catch the spam pretty quickly.

Angie, waving her flyswatter

[scarah2.livejournal.com]

IAWTC, I think it's a coincidence and spammers are targeting posts with the most backlinks.

I'm pretty open to FanLib conspiracy theories (I actually spent a few hours under the suspicion they were connected to Strikethroughgate) but in this case I think the simplest hypothesis is probably the correct one.

[dragonbat2006.livejournal.com]

Well, that's annoying! You can block anonymous comments in your settings. I was getting a bit of that, though not in the volumes that you are...

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Gonna go do that now. :)

[kitesareevil.livejournal.com]

Weird. I thought they would have been routed through an anonymizer, but it wasn't, at least as far as I could find. Looks like they IPs came from the following:
China, Netherlands, Michigan US, Pennsylvania US, Hong Kong, New Jersey US, and Sweden.

[zellieh]

I had the same thing happen. One specific post on my journal attracted a lot of spam comments, and I think it's the high-volume thing, because that post was a story that got a lot of links on places like del.icio.us. I can only assume that some sort of spam-bot found it, or that the URL was added to a list of some kind.

I just ticked the box to 'mark the comments as spam' when I deleted them. It seems to have worked for me, so I didn't need to block anonymous comments, which I didn't really want to do, as that blocks anyone who doesn't have an LJ.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have too many people meander over from ff.net to want to block all anonymous commenters.

[elf]

I screen anonymous comments so they don't clutter the view, but I don't block them; I want to be open for non-LJ people to comment.

I got some of these on some of my older posts that were linked from my profile. I just deleted them, but I suppose they should be reported to LJ abuse because they seem to be a growing problem, and 6Apart may need to work on developing software to block them.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I got hammered with a bunch of anonymous comments when I exposed a Fanfiction site that was a donation scam. I haven't allowed them since.