For those we lost, We will not forget 09/11/2001 “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
— The Continental Congress, July 4, 1776

“The task of statesmanship has always been the re-definition of these rights in terms of a changing and growing social order.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt (Commonwealth Club Address, 1932)

“Roosevelt was wrong! The principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence are the principles of individual liberty. Our unalienable rights, given to us by God are given to us as individuals. Our rights do not come from society or the government, and they cannot be redefined by politicians. The nature of these rights carries with it the implication of individual responsibility, without which we surrender them.”
— Perri Nelson, November 6, 2008

Spam filter update

Published Thu, Nov 22 2007 11:43 AM
Technorati Tags: Software Development, Annoyances

I've added an additional, home-grown spam filter to the website. This one runs before the AKismet filter and acts on the trackback user agent string.

Since I installed AKismet I've been receiving literally thousands of emails per day from my website notifying me of trapped spam pings. The email doesn't come from AKismet, but from the handler I added around AKismet.

I get the email because every now and then, AKismet falsely identifies a valid trackback ping as spam. When that happens, I try to "rescue" the ping by reporting it as a valid ping to AKismet and adding it into my database.

The trouble with that is that the spammers are very active, and false positives are very infrequent. I see maybe four or five false positives a week out of literally tens of thousands of real spam pings. I'm really tired of reading the junk that spammers try to post here.

The user agent filter is based upon a pattern I've noticed. There appear to be two (maybe more) user agents that are exclusively used by spammers. I've never received a legitimate trackback from anyone using them. The new filter will reject any trackbacks sent with one of the following user agents: "Trackback/1.02", and "USERAGENT". I will not be receiving rescue mail for these trackbacks.

Another common problem with spam trackbacks is the failure to provide any user agent string at all. Those trackback pings will also be rejected without an opportunity for me to rescue them.

Hopefully this will reduce the level of frustration I experience trying to make sure that people that have a legitimate reason to post a trackback get their trackbacks posted. And maybe, I'll have to read about Viagra, pornography, used car dealerships, and painkillers a bit less often.

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