damaged people dot com

I just read on Bio's site that he had to close off some features of his site due to spammers.

One of the less violent games I play is Rail Road Tycoon 3

I spend WAY too many hours getting all sorts of trains to and from the right cities.

ANYWAY .. my bitch ... check out what happened yesterday to the FORUM that was built for the game. ALL the comments were wiped out for no apparent reason.

http://www.gathering.com/forums/index.php?c=10

Wonder if anything like that could happen HERE??

<GRRRRRR!!!!>

Bio, how's your countermeasures?

I bet Bio is on it... but damn .. I just noticed that ALL the forums over on the Gathering have been ruined...

Years of tips / tricks and help .. GONE ... wonder if backups of all that can be restored...

As far as I understand it... the only way that can happen is if you allow external access to your database.

I don't allow that.

Jester has also used several hacker tools on the server (he's a total hacker in real life, but he uses his powers for good... mostly). While we're not 100% safe... no machine is. He feels that we should be safe enough.

I also make backups of things like the database (soon that'll happen nightly). If someone does something stupid like that to us, I'll just restore it and we're back in business.

As for my website... yeah, I've turned off some features. I'm getting drilled with comment spam. I make changes to the system and it stops them for a few hours, then they're back. It's all for the same website, so I'm pretty sure I've become someone's bitch (they check me, see what I've done, then tweak their POS script to beat the shit outa me).

Fuckers.

I just did a google search on:

Ha(ked by NoPWD Team

and found lots of sites these asshole/fuckers did in. Most seemed to be NON English sites.


Sorta cute like pushing people in wheel chairs down escalators.. sometimes just because you can .. don't mean you should.

I've backed up this forum and my site's db just in case.

I gotta hound jester about getting the server set up for the daily backups. I'd be a little more than pissed if this happened here.

As for killing the comments on my site, you now get this message:

Sorry, but due to the fact that spammers feel it's their right to fill blogs with their special blend of worthless shit, the comment form of this webiste is closed (until I figure out a way to stop them).

If a spammer attempts to post directly to the comment post page, they get this message:

Fuck you, you spammer piece of shit! Fuck you, fuck your momma (oh, wait... I did, she was horrible)... and fuck you one more time!.

Yeah... I'm a little grumpy over it.

Comments are open again over at wwbd.

We'll see how long this fix lasts.

Just a curious question, but, does it even make any sense to have comments turned on? Are you getting any that are truely worthy? Is there much discussion going on?

I've seen you having trouble and got to thinking if I ever get my own blog up and running, I just might not even bother with the comment system. After all, it's meant more as a rant on my part, not someone elses.

Is it a big deal to have comments on? Just wondering what your perception of the "worth" is.

Personally... I like them. It gives me a chance to get feedback on the dribble I spew without resorting to email... and a chance for me to clarify when people have questions.

There is, of course, a downside to it (as you've seen).

It's been about 18 hours and they haven't hit me yet (though I haven't gotten any hits from 12.163.72.13 in that time period either).