As at May 21, Typepad (our blog hosts) instituted a comment spam blocking system. The details are here.
Unfortunately, the nature of the blocking has a distressingly large number of false positives. It seems that if your IP address falls into a range that has been allocated to a spammer previously then you're blocked. Since lots of spammers use ISPs with DHCP there is a non-trivial chance that the IP address you're coming in on now has previously been used by an "evil doer", and so you may be blocked. Some of our best friends have already expeienced this problem. Typepad note breathlessly in their comment that "on our first day [the spam block] blocked over 20,000 spam attempts!" And they could distinguish these spam attempts from legitimate comments how, exactly?
We're currently in negotiations with Typepad to get this thing fixed. If they don't work out a fix bloody quickly then you can expect a note here directing you all to a better blog host.
In the meantime, if you can use the comment fields of this message to let us know of any problems you've had in commenting, then that'd be helpful. And yes, I know that if you are blocked from commenting then it's going to be hard to comment here. But if you wait a while and try again you may find that your IP address has been reallocated, and you're on an address that hasn't been blocked. Or borrow a friend's machine. Or do some wardriving and find an open ssid (there is one outside my house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia in case you're passing by). Do your best.
Thanks. And our apologies.
The Management.
Hi there. I posted the entry about the new spam control system last friday and am willing to help those that feel their machines are improperly registering as "open proxies". Just send me an email with your IP, date/time of attempted posting and the full error message that results.
My first suggestion to those that want to comment is to actually check your machine and insure that it is not infected/vulnerable. That's why those machines were listed in the first place.
And yes, we plan on tweaking this to make it work better. We will continue to try to balance spam protection with ease of posting.
Believe me, I'd much rather spend my time fixing these types of problems than deleting thousands of spam posts!
Posted by: PaulL | May 23, 2004 at 15:39
No one can post comments? :)
Checking to see if I can yet.
Posted by: Dan Scheltema | May 23, 2004 at 22:01
Yes, my IP is now cleared. I went through the process once I got involved in swapping emails with PaulL. When I checked it turned out my whole subnet was blocked because its addressed were dynimically assigned. I couldn't fine evidence that spammers had used any of these addresses specificallt, but, of course, I would not be shocked if they had. The Sobig virus installed a LOT of proxie servers on zombie machines that are always on. Most of the attractive ones are DSL/cable connected.
This is the wrong approach, though. It hurts legitimate users more than it does spammers (they just switch to yet another zombie, or go to forging headers).
It will be interesting to see what SixApart does with TypePad. They are in a bit of hot water with their user base (including me) due to recent major policy changes with Movable Type, their flagship product.
Good products, I suspect very nice people, but the process of growing from garage to something more is painful (been there) and often fatal. It's easy to lose touch with what made you successful in the first place, usually solid understanding of your customer base's needs.
Game companies, of course, never have that problem.
We'll see how long it takes me to get blocked again. At least my system at work should be pretty immune.
Posted by: Dan Scheltema | May 23, 2004 at 22:09
Sorry to hear of the trouble.
So today's lesson is, don't underestimate the complexity of reputation in large systems?
(Just thinking about how this might apply to problems in VW reputation systems.)
Posted by: Scott Moore | May 24, 2004 at 17:12
Testing, if this posts I guess I'm ok :)
Posted by: Lee Delarm | May 25, 2004 at 09:32
ping
Posted by: ren | May 25, 2004 at 10:31
i better test too, i guess.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | May 25, 2004 at 12:11
Hi all,
We have an override mechanism in place. If you're blocked, enter the code that shows on the error page and your post will be accepted.
Apologies to anyone who was blocked. We put this fix in under duress. I'm happy that we were able to offer a workaround after a few not-so-short days.
Suffice to say we're here for you, the blog owner and the commenters, we want everyone to have a positive TypePad experience with spam-free comments and easy commenting.
Thanks,
Paul Lindner
Spam Wrangler and Chief Bottle Washer
Six Apart
Posted by: Paul Lindner | May 27, 2004 at 17:43