Lillesvin Networks

This release of phpCF features:

• Incorporation of the Lillesvin Networks blacklist (text/plain version) – possibly more blacklists will be supported in future releases.
• Better testing for HTML
• Configuration to allow specific HTML tags, thus excluding them when testing for HTML
• Better debugging methods
• Removal of disabled checks in the instance-log

Go get it at http://lillesvin.net/phpcf!

It’s true! It’s nothing fancy really (you’ll understand when you see it), but it’s a game non the less. And it has an online Top 10, so you can compete with others! It’s really simple, highly addictive, non-violent, non-sexual … pretty much non-anything – just the way some americans (e.g. from Michigan) like it. Who knows, I could start chargin a monthly fee for playing – I could make billions! Muahahaaa!

Ok, I’ve been taking to much of your precious time – here’s the game! Enjoy!

I was just looking through my logfiles (I tend to do that whenever I get a bit tired, but don’t go to sleep) and I realized that the number of spam attempts has decreased heavilly. From blocking more than 30 attempts a day, all the way down to 52 attempts throughout June and no attempts at all in August or September. Same goes for blacklist redirects (ie. blacklisted hosts being redirected to a customized 404 page saying that they’ve been blacklisted.)

I’m not quite sure what to make of this, because there are a couple of things involved and the decrease started just as I made some big changes to my anti-spam system. The following are some possible factors in the decrease and there may very well be some I’m overlooking.

I started returning 404 Not Found on blacklist redirects instead of 200 OK

Are the spammers running some kind of automated learning, so once they receive a 404, they stop trying? That would be weird, because in order to even see the before mentioned 404, they have to make at least 3 attempts at spamming. So automated learning would be indicated by a vast amount of blocked attempts compared to the number of blacklist redirects, which is not the case here – both numbers have decreased heavilly, though the number of blacklist redirects varies from zero to 5-6 a day.

phpCF is working great

If the spammers are in some way measuring their success-rate, then it must mean that phpCF is working great, because no spam has gotten through in a long time. But this would also be strange, because how would they measure the success-rate? Googling? I think not.

The blacklist is complete

I’ve finally blacklisted each and every spam-bot on the planet! Yay, for me! :-p
Actually, this would explain the small number of blocked attempts compared to the larger amount of blacklist redirects. But still, somehow I don’t believe that this is the reason.

More options

Last, but not least, there may be outside factors causing the decrease (even though I’d like to think that I came up with the “cure for the cancer”). Maybe Google-bombing has gotten harder, or the spammers are getting more cautious – or maybe blog-spamming just isn’t profitable enough…

… and then there is all the stuff I can’t think up right now because it’s 8:46 AM and I haven’t slept yet. If you have any ideas, experiences, thoughts … anything! Please, post a comment or drop me a mail. I’d be more than happy to know what you think.

In order to keep things as simple as possible, I’ve re-done the site for my music: http://akm.lillesvin.net. Much love to die stffii for opening my eyes for simple sites. Now the site features an RSS feed for the songs, so you can simply subscribe to the feed and you’ll know when a new song is out.

Enjoy!

Yay! When my computer was in for service I was really bored out of my mind, but fortunately it inspired some creativity, which resulted in the two songs that I’ve just unloaded on the world.

They’re titled Ode to DOOM and Rockstar and you can get them on the website dedicated to my music – http://akm.lillesvin.net and for a while yet you can get them on http://lillesvin.net/music/. And while we’re at the music-websites stuff… I just hacked up a couple of temporary sites for the other two projects I’m involved with, Migato Estalo Co. and Laxness 101 – go straight there, download all the songs and enjoy them. (It’s not an offer, it’s an order!) Also I’d like to get some feedback on them – according to die steffie there’s a problem with the Migato Estalo Co.-site in IE, but since I don’t have an IE around it’s kinda hard for me to fix, so any feedback will be most appreciated.