I don't usually link to other sites for a single post, but I thought this was worth noting. According to this article mentioned on Slashdot today, a known spammer was savagely murdered in his home this weekend. I don't know if it's actually true, but if it is, I would like to extend my condolences to his family.

It must have been hard on them knowing their son was a spammer.

Although

I certainly don't advocate murder, I can't say this surprises me. Investigators, legislators and the courts continue to ignore the public cry for stiff penalties against spam operators (and believe me, I've been crying for months now). Apparently, somebody has now taken it upon himself (or herself) to administer his (or her) own penalties.

Even I have to admit the perpetrator may have overreacted, but… I can't really say I'll miss the victim, either.

Spammers really should stop.

In my never-ending quest to fill the lives of professional spammers and other lowlifes with heartbreak and disease, I'm now testing a couple of new comment-spam blocking routines that I've developed for Turdhead.com. If you have trouble leaving comments, please let me know.

Although Turdhead.com readers never see the spam, I'm inundated with it daily (comments that look like spam have always been forwarded to me for final approval), and it makes it difficult to moderate the site while combing through

the queue hunting for real comments. Thus, I've decided to let the robots do my bidding: From now on, if it even looks like spam, I simply don't want to bother with it. Phasers are now set to destroy.

If anybody else running WordPress 1.2 would like to modify their own site to allow this functionality, feel free to drop me a line, and I'll send you the routines I've come up with. Meanwhirl, the comment forms are — and always will be — open.

Thanks,

VeryVito

So I spent another ridiculous amount of my weekend trying to figure out how to stop spammers from hosing Turdhead.com again. The latest wave of septic sludge from these lowlifes has been cluttering the comment in-box for a week now.

You never see it, but I sure do. Every time I log in to moderate comments, I'm greeted with dozens of offers to browse listings for mortgage renewals, Viagara prescriptions and poker tournaments. The best part is that nowadays, the corpse-eating pedophiles (I mean, um, "search engine optimization professionals") that send this stuff aren't even linking to their own sites: Their spam scripts are just sending the words "poker"

and "penis" a hundred times, inviting readers to search for the terms on Google. In other words, they're not even really advertising: They're just annoying administrators now.

And their message isn't even getting to Turdhead.com readers anyway (Note to spammers: We moderate comments, damn it! Quit wasting all our time!).

So now I've decided to appeal to Turdhead.com readers:

If any of you personally know an individual or company that spends their time doing such meaningless activity, please let me know. I'd like to interview them and find out what exactly they hope to gain. It'll be an objective interview, I promise.

Really, I won't kill them. Honest.