Spammers are Morons
Yeah, I know.... tell you something you don't know.
This is more of a rant than anything. I provide a quick contact form to communicate with me without providing my email address for bots to illegally harvest. Due to the increase in popularity of this site, the spammers have now started using my contact form to submit spam to my email account.
There are several ways to prevent this type of spam. The best method would be to implement a graphical verification system which cannot be interpreted by the spammer without human intervention. These systems work well, and they are easy to implement, but I do not have the desire to implement this type of protection at this time.
My comment related to this type of spam is simply to ask the spammer what they expect to achieve by spamming my account in this way. Obviously there is money involved in annoying the general populous, and one spammer even attempted to relay from my contact form. Such tactics do not work, and they simply waste everyone's time.
Played as a game of tag, I can create a quick filter to prevent the spammers from submitting information through my form. This process takes less than a minute to filter anything I find inappropriate. The spammers can attempt to circumvent my filters, but it certainly takes more time to verify the spam was accepted than it does for me to filter it out. In the end, I win!
The best part of this type of anti-spam process is the wasted time (manual tar-pitting if you will) spammers consume trying to send a single spam message to little ol' me... I'll bet there are much easier methods to make a buck. Standing on a street corner with a bucket would produce more money based on the time involved.
I will admit, I do enjoy the game a little. It becomes my own personal battle with spammers, in my own little world. The most satisfying part of the game is knowing I always have a trump card waiting to be played...
This is more of a rant than anything. I provide a quick contact form to communicate with me without providing my email address for bots to illegally harvest. Due to the increase in popularity of this site, the spammers have now started using my contact form to submit spam to my email account.
There are several ways to prevent this type of spam. The best method would be to implement a graphical verification system which cannot be interpreted by the spammer without human intervention. These systems work well, and they are easy to implement, but I do not have the desire to implement this type of protection at this time.
My comment related to this type of spam is simply to ask the spammer what they expect to achieve by spamming my account in this way. Obviously there is money involved in annoying the general populous, and one spammer even attempted to relay from my contact form. Such tactics do not work, and they simply waste everyone's time.
Played as a game of tag, I can create a quick filter to prevent the spammers from submitting information through my form. This process takes less than a minute to filter anything I find inappropriate. The spammers can attempt to circumvent my filters, but it certainly takes more time to verify the spam was accepted than it does for me to filter it out. In the end, I win!
The best part of this type of anti-spam process is the wasted time (manual tar-pitting if you will) spammers consume trying to send a single spam message to little ol' me... I'll bet there are much easier methods to make a buck. Standing on a street corner with a bucket would produce more money based on the time involved.
I will admit, I do enjoy the game a little. It becomes my own personal battle with spammers, in my own little world. The most satisfying part of the game is knowing I always have a trump card waiting to be played...
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