Until a few weeks ago. Stupid spammers found it and have begun using it as a way to advertise their spam websites. Everything from M1cr0s0ft S0ftw4r3 Ch3ap! to porn and more. Bastards.
I wrote the guestbook from scratch because nothing I could find for free (or even pay) did it the way I wanted. This was fortunate, because it allowed me to easily add some admin controls when we got our stalker.
Yeah, we had a stalker. She was this lady, or maybe just a teenage girl, from Tample, FL [sic]. Her name was Bethany, Lauren, Lindsay, Erica, Jackie, Ellen, or Lisa, depending on the day of the week and her current mood. She was going to marry Joe Stein, Joe WestStein, or Joe FordStein very soon and wanted to wish us well. A typical post was:
Hey Bev and Mike,
Hi!! Bev and Mike: You BOTH Look Very Nice....
Congrates!!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~MUCH LOVE ALWAYS~*~*~*~*~*~*~*NEVER FRIGHT~*~*~
NEAT WEBSITE...
Hi!! Bev and Mike: You BOTH Look Very Nice....
Congrates!!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~MUCH LOVE ALWAYS~*~*~*~*~*~*~*NEVER FRIGHT~*~*~
NEAT WEBSITE...
This was just one of 17 or 18 messages she left on our guestbook over a period of several months. A google search on some of her names revealed that she was a real pro, stalking dozens of wedding guestbooks around the internet. Our stalker was one interesting character! I'm hoping she was just some pre-teen girl getting all dreamy about her own wedding someday, but who knows?
This finally prompted me to do two things. First, I added some admin controls. Guestbook entries could be "censored" so they didn't show to anyone but the admin. And I added her IP to the new auto-censor list - new posts were automatically censored (but still saved in the database). That pretty much took care of that little problem. She posted a few more times (including one nasty profanity-laced message, realizing she was being censored) before giving up.
But not before I had a little fun. I just couldn't resist... The next time she visited the site, she would see this personal message:
Dear Bethany, Lauren, Nikki, Geoff, Lyndsay, Jackie, Karen, Lisa, Erica, Joe or Ellen:
Thank you so much for signing our guest book! We were delighted to see the wonderful messages that you have left for us over the past year. You must truly care a lot for us since you left not one, but SEVENTEEN messages. Wow! Using different names was an extra bonus, too - it has boosted our egos knowing that others who view our guestbook will think that we have more friends than we really do! We are truly indebted to you for this warm gift of kindness.
There's just one problem - we don't know who you are! We've spent the last year agonizing over who you might be so that we can thank you properly. Unfortunately all of our leads turned up empty:
As you can tell, we're stumped. Actually, we're quite embarrassed about not knowing who you are - what a huge faux pas! Could you please enlighten us? It would mean the world to us. Thanks!
Mike and Bev
Thank you so much for signing our guest book! We were delighted to see the wonderful messages that you have left for us over the past year. You must truly care a lot for us since you left not one, but SEVENTEEN messages. Wow! Using different names was an extra bonus, too - it has boosted our egos knowing that others who view our guestbook will think that we have more friends than we really do! We are truly indebted to you for this warm gift of kindness.
There's just one problem - we don't know who you are! We've spent the last year agonizing over who you might be so that we can thank you properly. Unfortunately all of our leads turned up empty:
- We tried emailing you @aol.com but the messages bounced.
- We can't think of anyone we know in New York.
- We contacted Cablevision's Optimum Online division to see if any of our friends or family may subscribe to their internet service. They were quite helpful but we were unable to find a familiar name in their subscriber list.
- Because we are big computer lovers, we tend to just remember what software many of our friends and family use on their own computers. We couldn't think of anyone we know that uses Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 98. We know many people that use IE 5 on Windows 98 or IE 6 on Windows XP, but none with that particular combination.
- Searching the web didn't turn up any good leads, either. But we did learn that you must know a lot of people who are getting married, and were truly touched to see how you have spread your kindness to all of them. The world is a better place because of you! Strangely, our internet search did not turn up your own wedding web site. Can you tell us the address? We would love to visit and leave you a message or 12.
As you can tell, we're stumped. Actually, we're quite embarrassed about not knowing who you are - what a huge faux pas! Could you please enlighten us? It would mean the world to us. Thanks!
I would have loved to see her reaction to this. All I know is that she saw it, and we never heard from her again until almost 2 years later. The auto-censor still kicked in and we weren't bothered.
So anyway, I have admin controls, and thus I can deal with the $%*&ing spammers easily enough. It's sad to say that most websites where users can leave comments will eventually need good admin controls. Such is the nature of the anonymous internet. We'll need to add some more controls to these blogs before too long.
But should I have some fun with the spammers first? From the logs, I can't quite tell if they're using bots to post or actually doing them by hand. My guess is by hand because we haven't been flooded at any given moment. Or maybe the bots have been written so as not to be that obvious.
If they're posting by hand, there's probably all kinds of nasty things I could do to them. I could redirect them to any of the many famous disgusting images on the web. I'm sure I could send them all kinds of nastiness in the form of viruses and trojans, but I won't stoop that low. Not even for spammers. Either I'll have some fun with them, or I'll just auto-censor them and be done with it.
What would you do?
For one system, I set up a 'curse' command so that the annoying people would still see their own messages but no one else would. So they'd have no idea they were cursed, and it would just seem like no one was responding to them.
My theory being that if you yell and scream and no one listens, then you eventually go away...