TotSP comment issues

Submitted by charlie.collins on Mon, 06/14/2010 - 11:51

Tagged:

TotSP

Because of a plethora of douchebags on the interwebs who like to post spam comments here (even with various forms of captcha on, they just do it manually) I have disabled comments for non authenticated posters. Also, you can't get a new account right now ;). For technical reasons, with a bit of laziness mixed in, TotSP can't send email at the moment. Until I get the email issue fixed, and account authentication rolling, it will be only existing users that can post comments. After I get the account stuff squared away, new users can either sign up to post comments, or I may make them moderated before they show up. (The current email thing is because AT&T sucks ass, even more ass than you previously thought they were capable of. Thanks AT&T for blocking port 25, then when I call technical support first asking me what a port is, and next vehemently telling me you don't block any ports. To which I responded, really, a second ago you didn't know what a port was, how do you know you don't block them? Asshole. Then finally after a long hold period telling me you do block it and won't lift it, even for a customer with 10+ years of service, paying for a static IP.)

Comments

Yeah, Script Kiddies suck

Submitted by cybrhippy on Mon, 06/14/2010 - 14:59.

I hate script kiddies and all the bots sending malformed email's to my server hoping to sneak one past the goalie or just using me to bounce error messages as spam on purpose. Well.. Aside from Comcast sucking... They do still allow people w/ static IP's to run their own mail servers.

Thanks...

Submitted by kebernet on Mon, 06/14/2010 - 17:56.

I have spent a couple hours deleting spam and trying to tweak the captcha settings every few days the last couple weeks, but couldn't get it under control. I also deleted about 100 users from the DB the other day (sorry if I killed you accidentally). I hate to be those people, but I am kind of contemplating turning off comments and just turning on trackbacks.

current?

Submitted by sticks on Tue, 06/15/2010 - 01:16.

I've been dealing with this little problem for years. I paid to have a redirector for several years and I finally gave up and let big brother read all my email by using google apps for domains. I think that the last straw was when my redirector expired but sent email to the account that I was... wait for it... redirecting. Took me several days to sort out that little debacle. So my question is how did it just now get broken for you?

Well, I guess it's a long

Submitted by charlie.collins on Tue, 06/15/2010 - 12:48.

Well, I guess it's a long story. I had a simple home grown match captcha back in the day before there was such a thing as a captcha, and that worked great, for years. Not sure why they didn't script past it, maybe simply *because it was custom* (and they just use some script someone else wrote specifically for Drupal or Wordpress, or whatnot), not sure. Then when we went to Drupal I used their captcha module which has also done a pretty good job for 2-3 years. Maybe 5-10 get through a week, and I just manually kill those. But the last 2-3 weeks the scripters have caught up with Drupal (or some idiots are just entering in hundreds). I have changed from math to image, and back and forth, and updated modules, still just getting hammered. In all I don't really know why it's only recently been as severe a problem, but it has.

sorry, I meant

Submitted by sticks on Tue, 06/15/2010 - 16:14.

getting port 25 blocked so recently. I've not been able to use it for years and years.

Duh, my bad, sorry. I just

Submitted by charlie.collins on Tue, 06/15/2010 - 20:57.

Duh, my bad, sorry. I just read the end of your post about email whilst at the office, in the context of it being a reply to Cooper, and wasn't paying attention ;). The truth is, I switched to Ubuntu server at home only recently (ok, maybe a year ago, and it's been down that long in terms of email). Before that I had a custom compiled sendmail binary that I hooked up with all kinds of goodies including SASL SMTP AUTH (client) to AT&T. That setup would still work, but honestly, I don't feel like spending a day and a half re-doing it with Postfix/Ubuntu (or hacking on sendmail on Ubuntu) just because AT&T won't open the goddamn port. I'm looking at other options now, including hosting penguin at AppEngine (just have to write a GWT blogging package, been wanting to do that anyway), or just switching ISPs and making that a condition of the deal (trying to wean myself of AT&T anyway).