2009 Antispam in Review

[azurelunatic]

Quarter 1:

Closed beta. Site owners handled all spam.


Quarter 2:

denise got tired of handling all the spam and appointed azurelunatic head of antispam. invisionary became co-head.

Open beta.

Internal tools and policy were worked out.


Quarter 3:

exor674 discovered a bug whereby spam was getting through that ought not to have been. She and Mark got this squared away very quickly, which lessened the load on the team and the entire site.

Dreamwidth picked up the Spamhaus drop list.

There were continued improvements to internal tools and policy.


Quarter 4:

There was a notable rise in erroneous reporting of non-spam but unwanted comments, followed by a fall back to previously established levels.

Weekly reporting started. There was a drop in spam over Christmas and the new year.

One of the very few advantages to seeing this much spam is being able to note the highlights.

• There is a surprising amount of spam that does not actually include directly profitable content (links at which you may be persuaded to partake of their dodgy goods and/or services, or links to drive up their search engine credibility). The working theory is that these are test runs so they can see what's being left unguarded. The occasional quotes from a variety of dead philosophers are just a bonus.
• Santa Claus and Viagra in the same sentence makes me run screaming.
• Styles designed for non-LiveJournal-based blogs are not likely to work on Dreamwidth.

The spammers would also like you to know that there are many fine establishments on the internet where you can obtain

• adult goods and/or services
• pharmaceuticals, recreational and otherwise
• Genuine fakes
• shoes

Perhaps you will choose one of theirs?


Policy and internal tools, as ever, improved in response to c'thia.