Wordpress 2.9.2; An Update You Can Probably Skip
Posted by Mitch on Feb 16, 2010
If you have a Wordpress blog, by now you probably have noticed that there’s another update, this time to 2.9.2. Unlike previous updates, this one corrects a minor security flaw that most of us really don’t have to worry about, so you can probably skip it. However, since I’ve mentioned that, I might as well gripe about it at the same time.
The security fix has to do with this new thing they added with 2.9 where, instead of just deleting certain messages, you can move them to the trash and then delete them from there. It seems that if you have people who log into your blog to do whatever, they can look at any messages that you have trashed. The concern is that if you trashed something because it was sensitive, you might not want anyone else in there.
Of course, I’ve kind of railed against having to sign into blogs to comment anyway, so in a way this penalizes those folks who have made people log in to comment; tough being you. As for what move to trash, the only things I move to trash on any of my blogs are when there’s a trackback and it’s coming from me from another blog I’ve linked to. I figure those don’t need to be there, and I’ve already taken care of not sending trackbacks to the blog I’m writing on because of the No Self Pings plugin I wrote about back in November.
My minor rant is against this “trash” thing to begin with. I’d like to know how many people have been going around deleting things from their own blogs, then suddenly saying “oops, I wish I hadn’t deleted that?” Frankly, it’s an extra step I hate having to do when I do it on those trackbacks. However, since they did that, why couldn’t they have added the one more option in their drop down menu to allow those of us who feel sure about what we’re getting rid of to delete at that point?
And one more thing. Have you noticed when you check your spam filter than if there’s something in there that’s really not spam, if you select Not Spam it moves it to your comments, but you still have to approve it? At least here the drop down menu does give you the option to approve the comment so you don’t have to touch it twice. Consistency can be our friend sometimes.
Anyway, skip this update if you don’t have people logging into your blog, or if you don’t ever plan on having anything sensitive that you don’t want anyone else to see in your trash.
by Paul Myers; check it out!
Insulting Spam
Posted by Mitch on Jan 28, 2010
You know, spam at best is normally irritating and nerve racking. These days, spam is taking on a new, direct approach that leaves me confused and wondering what some of these people are thinking.
I can’t be the only one seeing it, but spam comments are actually starting to get insulting. Since I usually delete stuff pretty fast, I haven’t been charting a lot of what it’s been saying lately. However, I thought about it enough to save the last two examples:
“Even though this is very interesting, I don’t think I could agree with you completely.”
“Seriously? Don’t get me wrong, I’m in agreement with you partially, but when you say something like this you actually have to be ready to defend it.”
Many of you are probably seeing the same kind of thing these days. I know that because I visit a lot of blogs, I see a lot of them that have both positive and negative spam comments on them, and the owners of those blogs either thanking the people for their comments or arguing with these spam comments. Sometimes I find that fascinating, and other times I find that pretty sad. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on the internet for long time that I can tell it’s spam, but sometimes it just seems so pathetic seeing people trying to argue with something that’s been automatically generated, thus isn’t real.
Not that spam has any redeeming value to begin with, but I keep trying to figure out what possible motivation the people who send this stuff out have in being either rude or in attack mode. Most people don’t respond well when they’re being attacked, and when it comes to their blogs people are more apt to delete rude comments than to keep them around. My thought has always been that I don’t mind if people don’t agree with me as long as they keep a certain amount of decorum. I’m not going to allow bad language, and I’m not going to allow name-calling much beyond calling someone a jerk as long as there’s an explanation behind it. I figure it this way; I pay for it, my name is attached to it even if I’m not really a part of the conversation, and I’m not letting it stay.
I guess this is just the next stage of spam trying to find a way to seem as realistic as possible. I hope those of you who read this blog aren’t falling for this kind of thing all that often.
Mailwasher
Posted by Mitch on Dec 14, 2009
I’ve been told that if you write a review post about a product that it will drive sales of that product, especially if what you have to say is very good and very true. Let’s see how true that premise is.
Back when I was warning y’all about hidden messages in email, I mentioned Mailwasher for the first time. I even pointed you to a review I wrote about it on another site. I’m writing this review that I hope will end up being different than the previous review, since I’m not going back to look at it before I write this one. And I have this program and I’m always telling people about this product and I’ve purchased this bad boy, so now I’ve just fulfilled the FTC thing that everyone is so worried about (except me; I probably won’t write about it, though).
Mailwasher is a software program that allows you to check your email while it’s still on the server. It doesn’t care what you use as an email program, so no worries there. However, by checking email while it’s still on the server, you get to decide what you’re downloading to your computer and what you don’t want to download to your computer. You get to see the links that are hidden in email while it’s still on the server to validate whether those emails are true or not. You can add as many of your email addresses as you need to, but I’ll talk about that one because if you have email being redirected you won’t have to add those email addresses.
Let’s start with what it looks like. Here’s a screenshot of the program in use:
Actually, the way you’re looking at it here is pretty small, but you can right-click on it and open it up to see it better. And I apologize to John now for now long it’s going to take to download this one for him.
There are some other categories you can have, but these are the ones I use, and I feel they’re the most important. You can also move the categories around if you want to. That first column is probably the most important because that’s the one where you can train Mailwasher on what should be blacklisted and what should be made friendly. The status box tells you what it thinks the email coming in is. It has its own way of determining what it considers as spam or junk, and it’s pretty good.
If you look at that last column, you see where I have two separate classes, personal and second account. Though I have lots of email addresses, I have all of them directed to one of two accounts, both through my internet provider, which is Road Runner. I have two separate email addresses for that. That’s important because when you create your accounts, you need to put in your username and password so that it can check your email while it’s still out on the server.
Now, for the bottom part of the program. That’s where you’ll see what you’ve been sent. You can see as much or as little as you want to see there. I have mine set to give me 445 lines of data, which is more than some might like, and less than others might like. But that’s where you’ll see any links that might be embedded in an email, and where you’ll see some of those strange words that you know means that’s an email with images and hidden stuff that might contain viruses or malware. If a friend is sending an attachment you won’t see that, but at the top you have a column that tells you how big the email you’re getting is, and you can pretty much bet that any email more than 200K has an attachment of some type.
I’ve been using this program for about 5 years now. I’ve only had one email slip through in all that time that had a virus on it, and that wasn’t the program’s fault, but timing. Once you delete all the email you don’t want anymore, you should then download your email. However, sometimes a new email is coming through at the same time and will slip through; nothing you can do about that. I swear by this program, and I really do believe that anyone, from those of us with a bit more web savvy than others, or those with very little savvy whatsoever, should be using this bad boy. Every time I learn that someone has a virus on their computer, I think of Mailwasher and ask why they don’t have it.
Probably because they haven’t read this review. Now that you’ve read it, think about your safety and see if you believe you could use a little bit of help. Trust me, the price is worth it.
And there you go. Now, let’s see what happens. 
Russian Spam Heavy Again
Posted by Mitch on Oct 21, 2009
Last August, I started noticing that I was getting a lot of Russian spam all of a sudden. I have no idea why, but at that time I had someone register to post on this blog with a Russian email address, which I immediately killed. After about a week, it stopped, and things were quiet for a long time.
In the last two weeks, it’s popping up again, a lot of it, on all 3 of my blogs. It seems like the oddest thing, but there you go. I still can’t figure out what these people think they’re getting out of spam. When I wrote my post on hating spam, I listed a statistic showing how there might be a possibility of some of these guys making upwards of $9,000 a day by sending all that spam out, then followed up less than a week later with another post on an article that showed that some of these spammers were probably getting less than 30 clicks a day, making almost no money at all, even with the volume of email going out.
Of course, we all know that, in general, many of these spammers are only looking for the links on blogs where the bloggers don’t care about their blogs anymore. That’s why I wish someone would pay me to go around the internet and kill all dead blogs, so these spammers won’t get what they’re hoping for.
Oh well; I’ll keep dealing with it, and hoping that it ends pretty soon. Glad I have that Askimet protection.
The Changing Face Of Spam
Posted by Mitch on Aug 18, 2009
You know, I don’t understand spam at all, especially when it’s aimed at blogs. Well, I do, but I’ll get back to it.
Those of us with Wordpress blogs, by this time, should all know about Askimet, which learns the patterns of spam and moves it into a spam filter. We can then take the time to look at it to see if there’s something good in there that we want to keep, or delete it, or allow Askimet to delete it as a later time.
These days, I’ve noticed that some spam has gotten smarter, and some has gotten longer. Back in March I wrote about spam getting sneakier, and that hasn’t changed at all. But it keeps getting smarter.
These days, I’m noticing three types of spam coming in. The easiest to spot are the one line items that have a link embedded in them. Sometimes the sentence makes absolutely no sense at all; those folks aren’t even trying.
The second thing I’m noticing is the very long spam messages. These are the types that also show up in email images, where there’s all this text that just makes no sense. But they also include lots of links, which Askimet easily picks up and sends to the spam filter. The problem with the long messages is if you’re going through the spam filter to see if there’s a legit message in there, which I do.
The third, though, is the good stuff. These are the messages that look so real that, I’ve noticed, most people totally miss it. They might notice it if they comment on a lot of blogs, and every once in awhile look at the comments on other blogs, but if they don’t, then they don’t have a chance. Earlier this evening I went ahead and approved a comment that almost looked like spam, only it used my name. Now, if someone has come up with something that actually reads names and puts out a lot of this spam, well, I just got had myself. But it won’t continue, because if one person does it and gets away with it, others will try, and then it’ll be easy to pick all of those out.
I know we all hate spam; how are you dealing with it these days?
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