Dear Mr Boneparte (or may I call you "Napolean"),

Someone has stolen your identity, and is posting loads of adverts to "Horse's Mouth" through it for on line gambling, medical products to increase virillity, etc. I'm kinda assuming you've not opened a casino on Elba, nor are you selling "Josephine Punch" from there ...

Anyway, to cut a long story short (somethng I rarely do), I've added a "mod" the the software that runs this forum so that anyone who posts from email addresses starting "napolean...." will receive a message telling them they've been rejected. It's as nice a message as I could muster up in my frustration at all the "noise" from these posts and it's nothing personal against any dictators, pigs (from Animal Farm, you understand) or others with that name. Just email me if you're genuine, and I'll let your particular address through - or your could, without problem, post from the more formal n.boneparte@elba.med

Technical note

The "Moveable Type" software that's used for these daily writings is widely used - there was no point in me writing my own system when there's someting far more thorough out there already. You'll find we use other standard apps like analog and YaBB here too. All are available in source.

One of the downsides of using a piece os standard software is that less scrupulous people who want to find security holes through which they can poke bulk advertising are more likely to target you; a standard hole found in one system can be used to attack others, and with something like a diary that invites comments where you need a number of near-holes, it becomes a bit of a game. With access to source code, though, it's possible for a knowledgeable software administrator to apply personal fixes and standard mods too. And that's what we've done.

In the case of Moveable Type, I've added

# Mod by Graham Ellis to reject known spam email addresses
if ($comment -> email =~ /^(jane_doe|grey_goose|azaddin|napoleon|johndoe|huy_lo|bushmills|luba|absolut|otard|gocha|absinth)/) {
return $app->handle_error("A real email address is required (I don't believe the one you gave - email graham\@wellho.net if it's genuine please!)");
}
# End of mod

to the Comment.pm file at line 250 (that may vary from version to version ...) and my spam traffic appears to have disappeared. Great. Good. Two further issues I need to watch. Firstly, that I re-apply the mod if and when I upgrade the software - there's a support issue with mods like this - and secondly that I really haven't trapped any genuine posters as I would regard such things as "wrong side" errors - I really mustn't upset genuine commenters.

I had best drop a line to Mt and Mrs Doe now too, hadn't I?

FootnoteTwo thirds of the emails send to our domain are classified as junk and not even delivered to us - we keep a graph that's constantly updated to hand to track this, and very rarely do we hear of an email being accidentally rejected!
(written 2005-04-11 06:18:33)

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