bah

Huh. So far, six LJ spam comments today. Anyone else?

(Still did not read House of Leaves, but scared self badly enough to sleep in living room. No, go ahead and mock. I mean, really. That was just sad.)

I am tempted to go seek out that cat-bowels-related coffee. I mean, I know it's like, the equivalent of throwing money in the air to watch it burn after covering it in waste, but--I'm curious!

More pearls of wisdom like above later.

ETA: grammarwoman posted a link to this about the Russian friend bots if you're curious.

ETA 2: Make that seven spams. *sighs*

ETA 3: Eight spam all in a row.

Comments

[marthawells.livejournal.com]

six LJ spam comments today

Me. I've been getting them off and on this week.

[drlense.livejournal.com]

I'm not getting spam comments, but I'm getting friended and defriended by a ton of random russian-language journals.

[tygress.livejournal.com]

Ditto. For weeks now, actually.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

What's your flock to non-flock ratio--ie, how much would you be seen posting in a week? Maybe they were checking to see how active you were?

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

No random spammy comments, & no Russian friends either... :: Knocks on wood ::

If you do get a cuppa that coffee, let us know how it is? You aren't the only one who is curious...

~L

[seperis.livejournal.com]

It runs for 99 dollars a cup in Britain.

*shocked*

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I just got one, on a comment I left praising a vid quite a while ago.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

This, yes. It's just so weird.

[samdonne.livejournal.com]

No spam, but I've noted this strange pattern in the last few weeks: a Russian LJ user friends me, unfriends three days later; nothing for two days, then another Russian user friends me, unfriends three days later... and so on. Different user each time, but regular as clockwork.

I don't get it.

Theories?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Now that is interesting. drlense above says the same thing.

I wonder if they were checking your lj for activity since you're dominantly flocked.

[grammarwoman]

Have you seen the post here about the Russian friend bots?

I perused the other posts under that tag, but I didn't see anything about random comment spam.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Added to my post. Thank you!

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

I'd avoid that coffee for now, given that civets have been linked to SARS.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/civet_ban_exec_order.htm

I mean, it's one thing to get it from a marketplace, or someone else with the disease, but seriously, from poop-coffee? No, that'd be highly embarrassing on top of um. Deadly.

Seriously. You get to the afterlife, and everyone asks how you died. "Um, I got sick after eating pooped coffee." and as Arlo Guthrie once put it "And they all moved away from me on the bench".

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I'd be mocked for ever. Literally.

[perspi.livejournal.com]

I have been getting spam comments to only one particular post in one particular LJ (not mine, but one I'm a maintainer of). It's...odd.

AND YOU! WITH YOUR FANLORING! Or should I say fanlorewhoring? You made me register as a user, and now I'm all nervous about adding content, but I did set up my userpage and it's ALL YOUR FAULT.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Want help with a walkthrough or you wanna work it out on your own? I'm not an expert or anything, but I'm comfy adding and editing. *G*

[trobadora]

I've had the Russian bots for ages (though mine are all suspended now, I believe), but the spam comments are new. None on my own LJ yet, but I've seen them around. Gah.

[shaenie.livejournal.com]

I really liked House of Leaves. I was surprised, actually. It was real effort to read, though. Not light entertainment.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I noticed that while skimming it. I'm excited, because that kind of format is fascinating, but also, you know, terrified. *G*

[quietus-x.livejournal.com]

There are Russian bots that have been hacking user accounts, too, using them to spam communities the hacked account moderates (and also clearing out all of the journal's entries in the process).

Copperbadge talks about it (http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/).

[seperis.livejournal.com]

OH, I read about that. *shudders* Reminds me I need to change my password again.

[poisontaster]

House of Leaves is one of the most frightening books I've ever read in my entirely life. And I come from a family where we used to rent horror movies by the dozens and spend all weekend watching them. I am a horror CONNOISSEUR. And I couldn't read HoL after dark. At all.

It's not just the story, it's the format. I found myself scrutinizing every little blot on the page, trying to figure out if it was there on purpose, or whether it was just a printing error or what. It makes you doubt yourself in this really terrifying metatextual way. Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing? And if so, what does it MEAN??

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that's what I'm hoping for. I love doing that with text.

...to terrify myself. *shudders*

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I started getting spammed today. The bots thing is annoying, and somewhat disappointing.

I used to get absurdist but conspiratorial responses to very old posts or comments from this elaborate art trolling project. They would link you to all sorts of bargain basement surrealist posts until you reached a manifesto about identity and investing too much in online personas.

The Russian bots, on the other hand, just use the same random prose excerpt generator as spammers. They respond to random old posts. I have no idea why they do it, but it creeps me out.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

At least my email spam is creative and someitmes funny--this is not. Dammit.

And yeah, they're hitting older posts on me, too. I do not envy LJ Support right now.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I got one random english spam comment on a months old post in my academic journal--nothing on this one--but wanted to thank you and will thank the person who posted the link--it just gives me warm fuzzies the way people put together info and others share it and oh, well, it's a NIFTY thing about LJ!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I bookmarked just in case. I'd heard vaguely about it, but the sheer scope of what she's posting is double wow.

[nnmpsn.livejournal.com]

Huh. I hadn't heard anything about this but was curious, clicked over to the "bots" post, and then looked and found that one had friended me. Since I don't offer much in the way of interesting content (and in fact lately I don't offer much of anything at all), it's entirely unlikely that someone I don't know would friend me. So, they are reported now.

(the person keeping track of it all at the other end of that link -- wow, they're devoting some time to it. also, they guilted me into responding to a poll that I otherwise would not have by being upset that X-number of unique IP addresses had accessed the post, but only, like, .25X had responded to the poll. and, uh, they are keeping a list of those who don't respond...yikes! that's dedication?)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*laughs* It is, isn't it? I'm impressed. And you know, a bit scared.

[ratcreature]

Me too. Not in your numbers yet, but yeah.

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

Somebody else gave me a heads-up that they're looking for posts that mention F@nl1b in some way - somebody left a comment in one of my old posts about it and I've been getting bots replying to that comment.

Either way, the whole thing is getting really annoying.

[tevere.livejournal.com]

I was holidaying at a beach house once, with this other couple who were quite new to Indonesia. And the girl, an American, came out with a plunger of coffee, saying, "Holy CRAP is coffee in Indonesia expensive -- do you know what this cost me?" She couldn't read Indonesian, and she'd accidentally bought (low grade) kopi luwak, or civet-cat coffee, for some outrageous price.

But it was GOOD. Seriously good.

On the other hand, when you're holidaying at a beach house almost everything tastes like the best food you've ever eaten, so it's kind of hard to tell objectively it if was worth it *g*.

[justascream.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you'd like a listen to the companion album, "Haunted," while you read!

[seekergeek.livejournal.com]

I am currently bot free. Several months ago (or maybe last year?) I got a few which I flagged, reported, deleted their comments, warned my flist about and then ban_set with extreme prejudice, though. (Am a dedicated fan of the "nuke it to a sheet of glass" method)

[adianna-rey.livejournal.com]

This bots come in waves. The latest wave appeared only in August and spammed the most part of the Russian journals. Some of them leave spam comments, some of them just friend and unfriend in two days or ask “I freinded you, friend me”.
Russian community thinks that it's someone gathering ratings (yeah, because some people friend them back) or planning to spam this journals later. The bad thing is that they work by chain – first they friend you, then some random people from your friend list, then some people from their f-list and so on. Really annoying. That way many of your bots most likely come through the people who friended you.
Here (http://juliy.org.ua/lj/antibot/index.phtml?action=banlist) is a list of the third wave bot-accounts, more then 3000 =( So you can ban at least 70% of them.